


Six Seconds To Gone

by tb_ll57



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M, Post-Eve Wars (Gundam Wing), Yaoi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-31
Updated: 2013-12-31
Packaged: 2020-04-07 06:53:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19079782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: By TB and Marsh





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Dacia, the archivist: this work was originally archived at [A Little Piece of Gundam Wing](https://fanlore.org/wiki/A_Little_Piece_Of_Gundam_Wing), which closed in 2017. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after July 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [a little piece of gundam wing collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/alittlepieceofgundamwing/profile).
> 
> Authors: TB and Marsh  
> Pairing: previous 3x2  
> Rating: M15  
> Notes: post-EW; character death (not a deathfic)

Duo crawled into his sleeping bag one night. Twelve years later, Duo's son sneaked backstage after the seven o'clock showing.  
  
The kid said, 'You're Trowa Barton?' and must have already known the answer, because he went right on to the next business. 'My dad always said if I was in trouble I should find you. Well, he said I should find Quatre Winner or Heero Yuy or Wufei Chang, but if I couldn't find any of them, I should find you.'  
  
'Don't I feel special.' Trowa was greasepaint from neck to belly, and the cats were especially restless, prowling their small cages furiously. The kid stared at them with wide eyes that were that familiar shade of purple-blue. Trowa lobbed big raw steaks through the bars and wiped his hands on his cotton undershorts. 'What are you doing on L3?'  
  
'I don't mean to be a bother, but do you have food anywhere?' He looked so hopeful, all four feet of him. Then, reluctantly, he added, 'I guess I could work for it.'  
  
'You guess.' There were two dozen stands out in the carnival selling anything fried you could dream of. So the kid didn't have money, which argued Duo didn't know where the kid was, or the kid--Trowa honestly couldn't remember his name--had run away and done it without any planning. If he was stupid, Trowa didn't want anything to do with him.  
  
But he jumped at loud noises. And his skin was dry and flushed, which suggested dehydration, and there were holes, for Chrissakes, in his jeans and elbows, and scrapes all up his knuckles. Whatever he'd run from had fought back. If he'd been just a kid on the street, maybe Trowa could have walked by without looking back, but he wasn't just a kid, was he? He was Duo's kid.  
  
Even if he wasn't Duo's mirror image, the way he ate solidified it. Kathy was in love by the third helping. She all but glowed as she threw open the trailer for a guest, all but emptied the contents of their refrigerator into the kid's apparently bottomless gullet. Even in the green silk costume and glitter still shimmering all over her curls she bustled in the little kitchenette like a born mother, even bringing out the faded placemats and napkins. 'Finally,' she told Trowa. 'Someone who eats what I cook without complaint.'  
  
'Gotta be starved, then.' The kid had gone right through a three-day old roast that had been dry to start, and was deep into a bowl of beef stew.  
  
Slurping it, actually. 'Oh,' he said around a mouthful of shrivelled carrot. 'Oh, it's real good. Dad couldn't ever cook for beans, unless it was beans, so we ate a lot of take-away and freezer meals.'  
  
It was as good an opening as he could expect. If nothing else, Trowa could probably outrun the kid, now that he'd eaten his own body weight. 'Where's your dad, anyway?' he asked.  
  
The spoon actually hesitated mid-air. 'Oh,' he said a third time. 'Well. He got murdered last week.'  
  
Trowa couldn't have been more shocked with a blow to the head. Kathy froze with the milk carton, staring at him. Trowa only just remembered to breathe, and then his heart went nuts, deafening him.  
  
Kathy. Blessed Kathy. She put her hand on the kid's shoulder, very gentle, her hand on his hair, the way women could. 'Why don't you tell us what happened,' she murmured, stroking lightly with her bright red nails.  
  
It worked the same charm it had on Trowa, when he was barely older than that boy. The kid looked up at her, and the look she gave back was sympathetic, and it promised to believe.  
  
The kid fell right into it. Glanced at Trowa, first, but fell right into it. 'Dad was talking to these two men at the shop,' he said. 'Got real heated. He came home that night and was locking everything down, which he hasn't done since my mom left all that ways back. He told me to stay inside. We have a workshop in the basement. Stay in there.'  
  
Trowa had to clear his throat. 'But you didn't, did you?'  
  
'Men came by.' The soft scritch of Kathy's nails was the only sound for a moment. 'Dad wouldn't open the door. Said he was calling the police. Except he didn't. He went and got his gun and then he went out the back.' His voice went slow. His face was sombre. Too young to have such an adult look like that, but he did.  
  
'Did you know them?' Kathy asked. 'Had they been to see your dad before?'  
  
'I didn't know them. But I only started helping at the shop last year after school.'  
  
'You're sure he's dead?' Trowa interrupted.  
  
Short pause. Trowa filled it wondering why he couldn't imagine what it would look like. He'd seen a thousand dead bodies. Just couldn't put Duo's face on any of them. Hadn't seen Duo's face, maybe that was the problem, in longer than this little boy had been alive. Duo's boy.  
  
Who nodded, a quick little jerk of the head.  
  
The confirmation shook him. It was Kathy, again, who took over, tender as a lamb. 'You're a witness?' she asked.  
  
'I didn't see it happen. I heard a lot of shots outside. I was--' The kid sucked in a deep breath and admitted it, face frozen. 'I was scared. I went into the workshop and I hid for a long time. All night.'  
  
'It's all right,' Kathy said. She hugged the boy about the shoulders. 'You did the right thing. You stayed safe like he wanted.'  
  
Safe. 'You're safe here,' Trowa said. 'This… can be a good place to hide.'  
  
'Thank you,' the kid said. 'I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a bother. I'm not sure you even knew about me.'  
  
'Course I knew about you. Your dad loved you a lot. Showed you off all the time.' He would have said it whether it was true or not. It helped it was true. It didn't that it left a lot unspoken, but no-one under twelve and related needed to know.  
  
God. Duo was dead.  
  
The kid wiped his nose on his sleeve. 'I can sleep on the floor and everything. And help your lady with cleaning. Or with the circus animals. I like animals,' he added, that hopefulness back like a lightness to the eyes. It didn't look like the desperation it was. Go to the others first, he'd said, Quatre or Wufei or anyone but Trowa Barton. Had he tried first? A week in the dark, running scared.  
  
'You're not sleeping on the floor,' Kathy objected.  
  
'Or outside. That's fine too.'  
  
Trowa rubbed his mouth. 'What's your name, kid?'  
  
'Rupert.' It was Kathy who supplied it. 'You remember, after Hilde's uncle.'  
  
'Mom's grandpop, actually.' Kid made a face. 'She's the only one who ever called me that. Everyone else calls me Six.'  
  
'Six.' Trowa reached for the milk, just to wet his throat. Kathy didn't stop him drinking from the carton, for once. 'And that works for you?'  
  
'Six seconds into trouble, and six seconds out of it.' He caught himself. 'But I'll be real good while I'm here. I mean, I'm always real good, sir, it's just a thing my dad would say.'  
  
Trowa spasmed out a smile. 'Sounds like something Duo would say. It's Trowa. Okay? None of this "sir" bullshit.'  
  
'Okay.' The first sign of shyness. It was hard to remember ever being that young.  
  
'I'll make up the couch,' Kathy said.  
  
'I'll be quiet as a mouse, you'll never know I'm here, Trowa, Miss. I don't snore or anything even.'  
  
'Relax,' Trowa said. 'Don't promise shit you can't keep. And if you're anything like your dad, you won't be quiet as a…'  
  
Duo had come crawling into his sleeping bag, the night they'd blown up their Gundams in Argentina. They'd pitched tents at the cliff edge right over the wreckage. Duo had gone off to piss, clumping like a herd of something over the grass and every breakable stick in a mile's radius, and when he'd come back he'd come into Trowa's tent.  
  
'Just don't be so loud Quatre hears,' he'd said. 'I don't want him jerking off thinking about us.'  
  
Not quiet, no. But he'd had a great laugh.  
  
Rupert--Six--was swiping angrily at his face. Tears barely had time to track, but his eyes were bright and red. 'Sorry. I'm sorry. One thing I'm never is stupid.'  
  
'It's not stupid to miss him,' Trowa said.  
  
'It's just been kind of--scary, without him.'  
  
Trowa forced himself to smile as reassuringly as possible. It felt fake from the inside out. But Six relaxed, seeing it, so Trowa held it up there.  
  
'I'll take care of you,' he promised.


	2. Chapter 2

It was definitely Duo.  
  
'Six different bullet wounds,' the coroner said. She lifted the sheet over the legs and pointed the knee. 'Blew it right open. Three up here on the torso, one in the collar that clipped him. Official COD is this one. You can see the gun powder residue. I figure four, five feet away at most.' She reached for a plastic straw and carefully inserted it into the wound. 'Angle's about 80, 85. He would have been lying on his back, with the shooter aiming down. Execution. Ruptured the aorta, as if the rest of it wasn't going to do the job.'  
  
Wufei's throat was too dry to swallow. They'd left Duo's face alone, at least. He'd hoped, he'd somehow expected, that Duo would just--look like he was sleeping. He looked dead. His lips were bloodless. Even his hair looked lifeless. His cheeks were starting to sink.  
  
'You know him?' the coroner asked.  
  
With that many wounds--they'd toyed with him first. Or just kept at him, again and again, until they slowed him down.  
  
'Yes,' Quatre said. 'We know him.'  
  
Quatre was red-eyed. Had been, since meeting Wufei at the shuttle port. He and Duo had always been close. But he hadn't been Duo's--  
  
The bang of the swinging door made all of them jump. The coroner twitched the sheet over Duo's body.  
  
'I didn't know Preventers were on this case,' the uniform in the doorway said.  
  
'We're not.' Wufei made himself turn. Kept a professional expression--not hard. He couldn't feel a damn thing.  
  
'Then you'll pardon me,' the uniform said, 'if I ask what the hell you're doing here.'  
  
Twangy L2 accent. Local police. 'Agent Chang,' Wufei introduced himself briefly. 'I'm not here to steal your investigation. I'd like to observe. Duo Maxwell is--was--a Gundam Pilot. You can imagine this attack is a matter of inter-Sphere interest.'  
  
That eased some ruffled feathers. 'Inspector Harper, L2 Police.' Harper nodded to Quatre. 'You'd be Mr Winner. Have you been to the house yet?'  
  
'No.' The coroner was rolling the drawer back into the freezer. Wufei did not turn to watch her shut the door on Duo. 'If you have the time, please, I would appreciate a walk through the crime scene.'  
  
Quatre's mobile buzzed. 'It's Heero,' he said, low-voiced. 'I'll catch up.'  
  
'Any suspects?' Wufei asked Harper.  
  
'We found four large blood samples beside the victim's at the house.' Harper glanced at Wufei. 'Beside Maxwell, I mean.' He had a car outside the morgue, and gestured Wufei into the passenger side. 'No hits on the database. We put out a notice to all hospitals and shelters. We think Maxwell either severely wounded or killed some of his attackers. We didn't find his weapon, or any of the weapons used on him, but we did recover three types of bullets from his body.' L2 had strict traffic control, so the roads were almost empty. Wufei stared out the windscreen as they whizzed through the downtown and into a tunnel toward the residential neighbourhoods. 'The boy is missing.'  
  
'That much I know.'  
  
'We thought he might have run to one of you. There's no evidence of a struggle.' Wufei didn't react. When Trowa had called with the news, the first thing they'd each agreed was that Six was safest, at the moment, if no-one knew his whereabouts. Harper continued, 'On the other hand, the murderers trashed the house. We're treating it as a kidnapping until there's proof otherwise.'  
  
'Have you contacted Hilde Schbeiker?' Wufei asked. 'His mother. She and Duo separated seven years ago.'  
  
'We would, if we knew where to look. No living relatives except the kid, and no-one around here seems to know where she took off to. Think it's possible the kid knew?'  
  
The tunnel let out into the amorphous daylight. Wufei had taken this trip a hundred times. His foot knew when to brake, his hand twitched as if moving the gear shift. Harper didn't take the back street short cut.  
  
'We have four minutes' worth of video,' the inspector said. 'From the security camera of the convenience shop across the street. We've got Maxwell going through the street, interrupted by gun fire. We've got a body that falls into frame and doesn't move for about two hours. Then a couple of men come back and pick it up. The image is too grainy to be specific, nothing we could salvage. There's shit to go on, here.'  
  
The entire street was marked off with crime scene tape. The neighbours couldn't be happy with that. Why hadn't they heard the gunfire? Why hadn't anyone called the police? L2 wasn't the quietest of colonies, but battles in the streets were hardly routine.  
  
'I want you to be clear--' Harper parked a good fifty feet from Duo's house. 'There's no evidence that this was anything to concern the Preventers. No evidence the murder isn't a local matter, and there's no reason yet to think it isn't.'  
  
'There's no reason to believe one way or the other. That's limiting. Limited thinking makes men miss things.'  
  
Didn't like that much. Harper said, eyebrows a dark stormcloud over his beady eyes, 'When I need help closing this case, I'll be sure to let you know. Meanwhile, keep your nose clean and out of my way. A Gundam Pilot of all people ought to understand that colonial business is colonial business.'  
  
It would have been easy enough to pull rank. A call to Headquarters on Earth would put him in touch with the President herself if he wanted to take it that far, and he did want to take it that far, wanted to cut right through the petty my-cock-is-bigger territoriality that plagued every inter-colony operation these days. Duo would have laughed at his frustration.  
  
And a million times had been the source of his frustration. All those rules. Not a word until Six was in bed for the night, and be back in the guest room before five so he won't know what Daddy and his friends do. Wufei had never dared to complain, had never been sure if he was miffed at the Machiavellian sensibility of the solution. 'It's one thing if you were living here and he saw you all the time and we could be dating,' Duo said, and brooked no argument, left no room for any. 'I don't want my kid introduced into adult sexuality by finding out his dad sleeps with some dude who visits every few months.'  
  
No, don't tell the boy the truth about anything. And when he's old enough to ask, Wufei had said, to which Duo shrugged, just shrugged it away. Non-issue.  
  
When Quatre arrived by cab Harper sawed through the seal on the door and let them inside. It smelled still, all the lights out for so many days. The spider plant by the front window was dying.  
  
'Front door was unlocked, but the back door was jimmied,' Harper told them. His shoes scuffed over the tile, clack of the heel and shuffle with the toe, the rolling walk of people used to the lighter gravity of Space living. 'Everything was trashed. They took the hard drive from the computer, but left two thumb drives full of stuff, and there's plenty that was networked between the computer here and two more at Maxwell's shop, most of which we recovered from internet storage. Bedroom was largely left alone, kitchen... Basement was ripped to fuck. We found a closet that locked from the inside. Open. My feeling is Maxwell stashed his kid in there during the attack, but for whatever reason the boy opened the door afterward.'  
  
Quatre stayed at Harper's back, solemn-faced and quiet. He touched nothing. Neither did Wufei, no more than he would have at any crime scene, except that his fingers reached on their own, wanting to right the fallen photo frame on the table by the wall there, to fix the rug where someone's step had ruched it. The desk drawers had all been turned out, the computer smashed to pieces. A maths text lay on the rug, still open to a homework assignment that would never be completed.  
  
'First shots fired out here.' Harper gestured around the small brown back yard, the half-fence shattered at man-height. 'We found shells, from what we presume to be Maxwell's gun. We didn't recover any weapons, but the shells don't match any of the bullet types we got from Maxwell's body.'  
  
In the alley between Duo's and the neighbour's-- 'Maxwell would have been standing here when he took his first hit. From the prints, I reckon it was the knee; I think he was limping and slowed down.'  
  
A doctor lived there. Dr Goodman. Why hadn't he reported the noise?  
  
Prints in the dust, all marked by small yellow flags. Running away from the house, running away from the fragile pre-fab walls that would have melted under a bullet's force. 'We've got more blood here, not Maxwell's. A pint and change.' Two full blocks away on the grid, headed further out, away from the homes, toward the tunnel. 'And right here around the corner, blood and brain matter, again not Maxwell's. He took down at least two.' And at the back alley of the convenience shop, 'Our third and fourth blood samples, and you can see here where they chipped a bullet out of the plaster.'  
  
'They were very thorough cleaning up after themselves,' Quatre said. 'This wasn't a random home invasion.'  
  
'No, it wasn't. It's not the most sophisticated clean-up I've ever seen, but they definitely had a basic to moderate knowledge of criminal forensics.'  
  
Last stop, marked by a lone flag of orange. Middle of the street. In plain view of a dozen windows.  
  
'This is where a neighbour found Maxwell,' Harper said, 'approximately twelve hours post-mortem.'  
  
Rust-coloured stain in the concrete. Executed, right in the middle of the street.  
  
Quatre put his hand on Wufei's shoulder. He felt it, distantly. He tried to raise his head, but it was too heavy.  
  
'Duo was...' Quatre's voice was scratchy, fading. 'Very important to both of us. Please, if you could give us a few moments?'  
  
Harper's feet turned point-out in answer. 'I'll be back at the house. I'll give you a lift back uptown, when you're ready.' Perhaps even with sympathy, 'Take your time.'  
  
'Thank you.'  
  
Then, into the silence, 'Wufei, I'm sorry.'  
  
He blinked. Made himself keep his eyelids closed. Internal peace to extend to the external, even if he wanted to scream. 'They don't know anything.'  
  
'Or they know everything.'  
  
Not like Quatre, to say that. And yet it was.  
  
'Something feels wrong about this, Wufei. To me, anyway. What are your instincts telling you?'  
  
'That it's a very good thing Six didn't advertise where he went.' He shifted gently from Quatre's hold and made a slow swivel, counting those facing windows, counting the houses, the occupants who had been, for whatever reason, deaf and blind that night. 'And strange as it is that he went to Barton, I think it may be providential.'  
  
'He's his father's son.'  
  
An explosive kind of rage threatened at that. Quatre seemed to realise it was cruel, and added nothing further, beyond pressing his lips together until they whitened under the pressure.  
  
'You haven't asked me to move in,' he'd said, the last time he was in that house.  
  
Duo had shrugged, bare-shouldered, red-shouldered from working in the shop by the forgers all day, red-knuckled. 'I haven't asked if this is a relationship, either.'  
  
'Why haven't you?' Ask me, Wufei had wanted to say, tell me what I'd like to hear from you. 'Bring Six. Move in with me.'  
  
Never agreed, but didn't disagree, and sometimes that said more about Duo than the words that were spoken. 'I don't know if I want Six in an Earth school,' he'd answered. 'All that propaganda. You really want a brainwashed rebel in the home?'  
  
'I need advice.' Wufei put his hands in his pockets and put his back to the spot where Duo had died, and concerned himself solely with what had happened while Duo was alive. 'He was keeping an eye on a group of Sweepers he'd been in contact with. Who had contacted him, more precisely. They wanted Gundamium.'  
  
The other man nodded his understanding. 'You think these Sweepers are responsible? There's no market for Gundamium. There's not enough left, that hasn't been seized by--' His eyes flicked up. 'Preventers?'  
  
Still quick as ever. 'He believed there was a Preventer involved. He was trying to-- you know Duo. He was trying to get close enough to find out.'  
  
'It probably got him killed.'  
  
'I don't believe the locals know. I don't believe they were involved, either, but my instinct is still to keep this silent.'  
  
'I agree. Is there anyone inside you can trust with this?'  
  
'Half the original corps have moved on. Duo never found the rat. Or didn't have time to tell me. I could call in some I trust, but they've been out of the system too long to be immediately useful.'  
  
'I think we're on our own.' Quatre fiddled with his tie. 'We need to know what was on Duo's computer that they might have taken. Obviously they realised he was spying on them.'  
  
There was a little comfort, treating it like a regular case. But his stomach still ached.  
  
'Did Duo keep a backup?' Quatre went on. 'You have to know his habits. Even the secret ones.'  
  
'I'm positive he would have kept copies. It's a question of where.'  
  
'Would Six know?'  
  
He had considered that, frantically, since Trowa's call. 'He would never have endangered his son. Not even to tell him to take anything with him, if there were trouble.' Not that it made Six any safer. Duo's attackers would surely assume that Six knew. It was no accident the house had been raided. It even made sense that they'd hesitated long enough for Six to escape. It meant they weren't that organized, and it meant they'd be more likely to panic and bring themselves into the open.  
  
'Children are smart,' Quatre said, with some irony. 'They notice everything. Even if Duo didn't explain what he was doing, Six may have seen things.' His hand closed on Wufei's. Then, without permission, he put his arms about Wufei.  
  
For him? Or maybe Quatre just needed it for himself. He enclosed Quatre to him with one hand to the small of his back.  
  
'One of us should go to Trowa's. Maybe both.' Quatre cleared his throat. 'I just... I don't like the idea that they're here, tearing through his things. Destroying whatever evidence might be here.'  
  
'I know.' Wufei eased away. 'And I don't think it's wise for all of us to go tearing off to L3. Harper will notice, if not Duo's-- attackers. Harper would expect me to stay. I've already antagonised him. I can keep his attention on me while you go to Trowa and Six.' He only let out the next sentence because there was enough bearing down on him, and Quatre would at least understand why he'd rather say it now instead of in front of Trowa himself. 'Why do you think he went to Barton, of all people?'  
  
'We don't know what Duo may have said to him. Trowa probably seems like an exciting, romantic figure to Six. Given the way he lives.'  
  
'God.'  
  
'I know. I love Trowa, but he's not the best choice for a refuge for the boy.'  
  
Wufei did not, then, say that he did not love Trowa, and he didn't say that he wished Six had gone anywhere else. Instead, reluctantly, he said, 'I suppose an eleven year old won't stand out at a circus, at least.'  
  
Quatre smiled, a little. 'Be that as it may.'  
  
'Let Harper drive you back into town. Get a flight to L3.'  
  
'All right.' Quatre turned toward Harper's car, then looked back. 'Did Duo make any arrangements? Did he have a will?'  
  
Wufei could only shrug. 'Not that I know of.' One of many things they'd just never got to.  
  
'Do you know what his wishes might have been?'  
  
Impossible to think about. Impossible to think.  
  
Quatre thumbed his cheek. 'We don't have to decide this now, Wufei. They probably wouldn't release the body to non-family. It's possible he had something on record. If there were anything, my lawyers will find it.'  
  
'All right.'  
  
'Let's go have some lunch.' Harper was waiting for them, had to be annoyed with the delay. Wufei couldn't see his face for the shine off the windscreen. 'Both of us need some time.'  
  
'I can't even think of eating, Quatre.'  
  
'Do you need some space?'  
  
'Are you asking me for space?' Wufei had asked Duo.  
  
'Time,' Duo had answered.  
  
Wufei rubbed his chapped mouth. 'No. Forgive me, Quat. But somewhere quiet, please.'  
  
'The hotel? Room service appeal? We'll thank Harper, take his card and promise to be in touch.'  
  
Wufei nodded his assent. 'That would be good.'  
  
+  
  
The third night, they found out Six had nightmares.  
  
Kathy beat him out of the sleeper, but only because Trowa stopped to grab and load his gun. He was just a second behind her, bursting out the door into the relative brightness of the den. Kathy shrieked when he aimed at the window, and then smacked him soundly on the shoulder. 'You told me you got rid of that!'  
  
'Pretend you didn't see it,' Trowa retorted. Six was all huge eyes in a pale face. But there were no banditos breaking in, no fire in the hatches. It was sinking in what had waked him, once instinct was taking input from the other senses. 'Kathy, go back to bed. I'll get this handled.'  
  
She pulled her robe tight, hesitating square in his path to the couch where Six was--quietly, now--freaking out. They made a real scene, all of them, undressed and wild-haired. The clock over the stove in the kitchenette read three am.  
  
'I'll put milk on the stove,' Kathy said. 'Make him drink some.'  
  
Six had obviously been crying before Trowa had frightened the crap out of him. His face was still wet. Trowa ejected the clip to put in his pocket, then changed his mind. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, being prepared.  
  
Still, he regretted it, especially when Six said, through a clogged nose and the sleeve of one of Trowa's sleeping shirts, 'I thought I heard shots.'  
  
He put the pistol in the back of his pants. 'Sorry. About frightening you.'  
  
'It's okay.' The sleeper door went quietly shut behind Kathy. Trowa propped his behind on the table facing Six's couch. 'I didn't mean to wake you up,' Six said.  
  
'You don't have to apologize for every little thing, kid.'  
  
'Sor-- okay.'  
  
The body had time to remember it had been asleep, just a minute earlier. And to be cold. Trowa closed his arms over his bare chest. 'Want to talk about the dream?'  
  
'I didn't know it was a dream. I thought I heard-- and it was dark. It was really dark. I was in the workshop.' Jesus, the kid's chin actually quivered. But then his face went hard and he rubbed a fist across his eyes. 'I wanted to see my dad. He said he'd be right back. He said-- that's the last thing he said.'  
  
There was nothing good to say to that, or at least nothing that occurred to a sleep-deprived man who wanted the impossible answers for himself, too. 'He would have if he could. He tried,' Trowa rasped. Cleared his throat, and went again. 'Want me to stay and talk a while?'  
  
It was funny, but Six really didn't look a thing like Hilde. Probably that helped. He was all Duo's boy, that stubborn chin, the upturned nose. The eyes.  
  
'It's okay. You can go back to bed. I'll be quiet.'  
  
'Want something to eat? Drink? I think Kathy keeps a stash of secret cookies in the top cupboard.'  
  
There was no kid who didn't want cookies, middle of the night or not. That got a hint of interest. Besides which--Trowa had his share of nightmares. Six wasn't going back to sleep any time soon.  
  
'Hey,' Trowa said. 'Grab your shoes.'  
  
'My shoes?'  
  
'Yeah. Your shoes. I'll get the cookies.'  
  
There was a box of caramel digestives on top of the fridge, as it happened. Six pulled on his jeans and sneakers while Trowa ducked back into the sleeper to grab a hoodie. Kathy was still awake, sitting up on her bed. Trowa kissed her cheek and didn't wait for the scolding.  
  
'Ready, kid?' He tugged his hem over the gun and belted his trousers. He stuck a cookie in Six's mouth. 'You know I was in the war,' he said, suddenly awkward. Didn't generally talk to kids-- attempted to avoid them at all costs, usually. Having one underfoot the past three days had nothing on trying to connect with one, though. Six just stared at him, obstacle two.  
  
'With your dad,' Trowa continued, belatedly. He kicked the door open and swung to the grass below without waiting for the electric step to extend. He caught Six by the waist and put him on the ground. 'I've had a lot of bad dreams about that. Some nights the last thing I want to do is fall back asleep. When that happens I like to come out here and check on the cats."  
  
'The big cats?'  
  
It figured that got the response. 'Yeah. The pens are over that way. You cold? They just started seasonal cycles on L3 two years ago.'  
  
'Don't have 'em on L2.' Six was close at his heels going through the trucks and trailers. No-one so much as stirring, including security, who was flat on his back and snoring at the perimetre. They ducked under the canvas tent flaps. There were the cages. He flicked on the orange overheads rigged from the cross-beams, and there was a lion right at the bars, growling at their smell. Trowa acquired an eleven-year-old on his hip. He tried not to wince as Six trod on his foot.  
  
'You know anything about the war?' he asked Six.  
  
The lion prowled the corner of its cage, huffing and grumbling. Six's head made the same slow revolution, following its path. 'I didn't until we started history studies in school. He never told me anything.'  
  
That surprised him. Not like Duo had anything to be ashamed about. 'Probably, uh, there were a lot of things about the war your dad didn't enjoy remembering.'  
  
'Maybe.' One of the lionesses had waked and joined her mate, sniffing the air with her big dark nose. Six didn't flinch away, this time, but he pressed closer to Trowa's leg. 'Maybe--'  
  
'What.'  
  
'Maybe it would have helped more if he'd ever told me stuff.'  
  
'Maybe.' The cats recognised Trowa. Shiraz and Tikka had come to the bars of their pens, too. Alone, Trowa would have pet or fed them, maybe even gone in the cages, but that wasn't something he needed to accidentally teach the kid. A little fear was healthy sometimes.  
  
Almost as quickly he regretted thinking it. Six had plenty of fear, now.  
  
'Do they have names?' Six asked. Subdued, who knew from what. He went to grip Trowa's belt. Trowa felt him find the gun instead, and wished he'd anticipated that, too. Chilly little fingers traced over the handle where it stuck out of Trowa's waistband. Just made a fist, then, in the belt, right next to the metal.  
  
Trowa forced a dry swallow. 'He's Sahara.' He pointed at the lion. 'He's only four. You can tell by how long the mane is. These two, they're brothers. Even younger. That pretty lady is Rakesh.'  
  
'Rakesh.' Tasting the name. 'They sound like aliens.'  
  
'A little. But we all are, sort of. Aren't we?'  
  
Duo would have laughed at that. Probably had, aeons ago, standing right in this spot with his arm wrapped around Trowa's shoulders. Duo never had understood that. Duo probably felt at home wherever he went. He was gifted that way.  
  
Had been.  
  
'You won't send me back?' Six demanded suddenly. His fist clenched on Trowa's belt. 'Because I'll just run away again. I know how to do it now.'  
  
'No, Six. And it'd scare me shitless if you ran away, so please don't.'  
  
'Don't swear.' Six's head came to rest on Trowa's ribcage, like that was even remotely natural to experience. It made him feel-- peculiar. Sure as hell not like a-- father. But God, he was responsible for this little life that for some strange, unknown reason-- trusted him. Needed him, now. He'd made it to thirty without ever being needed by a single other human being, had really bought a stake in that alien idea, if he wanted to admit it. He didn't. But it was still scary, letting it go.  
  
'Sorry.' He draped the edge of his hoodie around Six, which stopped the shivers. 'You wanna go back in or should we go tell the elephants goodnight?'  
  
Movement of soft hair against his bare chest. 'Would I be able to see them tomorrow?'  
  
'You're going to be here a while. You can see them every day.'  
  
'Tomorrow, please, then. And maybe the horses too?'  
  
'Absolutely. I bet if we talk to Raoul you can even get a job with the horses, if you like them.'  
  
'Okay.' Almost happy. One good guess, at least.  
  
'Kathy probably made cocoa,' he said. 'She'll give me hell for taking you out in the cold. Let's go in and let her.'  
  
+  
  
There were tourist shops in the shuttle port. All the shirts seemed to have logos on them, and Heero didn't know how Six would feel about an L3 footballer or the Colonial University of Mission Bay. All the shoes were in bright colours with irrelevant straps of velcro or plastic. He didn't like any of it. He didn't know Six's size, anyway, couldn't imagine what he was likely to choose for himself--certainly not when all he could see behind his eyelids was Duo, and he looked down to see a shopping basket full of black.  
  
Katherine was waiting for him by the Arrivals lot in the same decrepit Jeep Sunliner. She waved for his attention, though he'd already seen her, and endangered his feet by zooming too quickly for the loading kerb.  
  
'Why so many bags?' she asked him.  
  
He stowed his duffles and the shop bags carefully under the seats in back. 'I bought him some things.  
  
'Bought who-- Six?'  
  
'Yeah.' The passenger-side safety belt didn't lock. Katherine didn't give him time to fix it before she wrenched the Jeep back into traffic. Horns behind them honked, but she didn't acknowledge them. Heero gripped the edge of his seat. 'Because he had to leave all of his behind.'  
  
Her face went soft. 'That was really sweet, Heero.'  
  
His knee was jiggling. Heero made a fist, pushed down until his heel dug into the dirty car matt. 'He's settling okay?'  
  
'Some fits and starts.' She pushed dark glare glasses onto her face. The breeze from their speed flung her bright curls into a jumble, caught on the decorative hem of her vest. There were goosebumps from the chill on her bare legs. Heero noticed that, then turned his face to the road. It helped reduce the queasiness from her driving. He wasn't used to high-speed vehicles any more.  
  
'Trowa will be good for him,' he said.  
  
'Well, I'm glad someone thinks so.'  
  
He glanced back at her. 'What's that mean?'  
  
'Everyone calls. And even if they don't say it, I can hear it in their voice. Quatre even asked when he could take Six back to Earth. Back to Earth, as if the poor child's ever even been there.'  
  
He doubted the veracity of that. Katherine could be very defencive of Trowa. Besides which-- 'He should stay here.'  
  
'We agree on that. He's safe here. No-one even knows he arrived from L2-- we've put it out that he's actually Trowa's little boy.' She flashed him a wicked white smile. 'Mis-spent youth.'  
  
It took a moment to recognise the joke in that. Heero curled his lips obediently. She laughed, then, which he didn't understand, and reached across the shift to pat his knee. He tried not to move away too quickly. 'What's Trowa saying?' he asked instead. He hoped she wouldn't make a habit of touching him. Women who touched him made him nervous. He was already nervous enough.  
  
'Oh, he never says much of anything. But I think they get each other, if you can believe that. Oh, Heero, it could break your heart. When I think of how him and Duo were barely even-- Well, not my place, I guess. But I think, I hope, it's good for them both. You'd never believe he isn't Trowa's. He's just fearless. Trowa took him on the trapeze today-- not the high fliers, but with the net and a line-- well, he laughed for the first time since he arrived. Oh, my God, have you heard how he got here? He snuck into the luggage hold of a shuttle. When I think he could have suffocated or frozen to death--'  
  
'But he didn't.' For a moment cresting the highway they had a view of half the colony, all the way to the misty distant curve of the ring. Then they dipped down the slope again. 'Trowa gets people. He just doesn't talk about it. He pulled my ass out of the fire more than once and never made me feel like it was anything but normal.'  
  
He wasn't quick enough evading it. She squeezed his knee again. Then wrenched the Jeep two lanes to the left to the exit.  
  
'You drive like a maniac,' Heero said, disturbed. A shouted curse trailed them as they zoomed around the curve.  
  
'Oh, you know what traffic is like in the colonies. Anyway, we're in the area for the full month, at least, so there's no pressure to pick up and move again.'  
  
'And after that?'  
  
'Are the police even looking for Six? What about his mother? I don't know what kind of woman walks away from her own son, but good riddance.'  
  
'I didn't know her at all,' Heero said.  
  
'I shouldn't judge.' Her thigh flexed as she tapped the brake. 'It's not like I haven't watched Trowa suffer, all these years. What that war did to all of you. To everyone. It's something, having Six here. I never realised how different kids today could be. Somehow you never really realize that the world we grew up with is just a story to them.' She exhaled. 'Well. Listen to me prattle on, I haven't even asked about your flight. Heero, how are you?'  
  
It was obviously a question about how he was with Duo's death. He didn't think there was really much to say to that that she couldn't answer for herself. So he didn't say anything at all.  
  
Katherine filled the silence, anyway, after only a few seconds had passed. 'When we talked to Wufei and Quatre last, they still weren't sure if the police would let them have the-- Duo for a funeral.'  
  
That stirred him. 'Why not?'  
  
'If you ask me,' she said, 'it's because they know we've got Six. Well, by 'us' of course I mean all of you. They want Six, and they're holding Duo until we produce him.'  
  
She wasn't stupid or naïve, though Heero had once underestimated her for her emotional response to matters of the mind. But no body in a morgue was Duo. It wouldn't be Duo, and a funeral wouldn't change that. Death was the end.  
  
Duo had thought that, anyway. Heero remembered it very clearly. After the Battle of Libra, after OZ and White Fang had been disbanded and Romafeller had signed the Treaty of Sanq with the colonies, they'd had only one funeral to attend. For the scientists who had built their Gundams. It was small, only the five of them, the pilots, and a few others like Howard who had been a part of the history. They even had two bodies to inter, recovered from the wreckage in orbit. Duo had been antsy. Agitated. Heero had noticed because Duo was so rarely out of sorts. There was a soldier-priest performing the service, and Duo had been glaring at him, fingers tapping on his arms where he hugged them to his chest. 'They're not here,' Duo had railed later. 'And even if their bodies were it doesn't mean anything. It's just dead tissue. When I go, I want someone to jettison me out of an L2 trash chute. God-damn.'  
  
He had been remembering many things about Duo since Trowa's message. He knew it was a natural part of processing the news. He knew it wouldn't always be painful, but he was glad that it was. Duo might have hated the funeral, but he had grieved, noisily-- he was still Duo, after all-- painfully.  
  
Katherine turned off the road into a big grassy lot filled with cars and buses. The big wheel and a small roller coaster were running, and the carnival was packed with people. Heero could hear the noise even over the engine and the wind as they bounced through ruts in the dirt at the same break-neck speed from the highway. She ripped the Jeep behind the aluminium fence labelled 'Staff Only'.  
  
'I hope you don't mind, but we're getting low on space in the trailer. We've got a tent, if you want to be close, or we can help you find a hotel. There's a bunch right up the road.'  
  
'A tent's good.'  
  
'It's a really good tent. Trowa had a hiking phase, forever ago.'  
  
'I'm used to roughing it.'  
  
She did slow, finally, weaving between the trailers where the staff lived. She parked at one indistinguishable from the rest except by the deformed bird feeder on the roof. 'Here we are. There they are.'  
  
Trowa. He looked the same as he had when Heero had seen him last, half a decade ago. And the boy. Heero clenched his fists on his knees.  
  
Pins went flying through the air. Juggling pins. Clumsily, but they stayed in the air. 'Miss Kathy!' the boy yelled. 'Look what I can do!'  
  
Trowa was grinning. That in itself was something.  
  
'Look who I found at the port,' Katherine announced.  
  
'Hi,' Heero said.  
  
One of the pins slipped from Six's hand and dropped. 'Hi,' he replied. Shy. Only a very little bit.  
  
Heero held the shopping bag out at arm's length. 'Brought you some things. Since you left most of yours on L2.'  
  
He could have been Duo's twin, this close. Eyes were wider, though. Open, in a way even Duo's hadn't been.  
  
'Thank you,' Six said politely. He peered into the bag. 'That was real thoughtful, sir.'  
  
'You can call him Heero.' Trowa's hand landed on Heero's shoulder. The world expanded again. Heero swallowed, and his heartbeat normalised.  
  
'Heero?' Six looked up. 'Heero Yuy?'  
  
'Yeah. Sorry. I wasn't sure if you'd remember me. I haven't seen you since you were five.'  
  
'We read about you at school. My dad says I met you once. He says I threw up on your shoes.'  
  
He was startled into a laugh. 'I forgot about that. Too much popcorn.'  
  
Katherine slipped deftly between them before it became awkward. 'Let's go check out your new booty, honey. Be a relief to wear your own things, right? We can give Trowa back his tee shirts.'  
  
'Take a walk?' Trowa asked him.  
  
He swung his duffles to the ground by the trailer. He could see Katherine and the boy through the window. The sleeves of the football jersey were too long.  
  
'How was the trip?'  
  
'Short,' Heero said.  
  
'Where were you?'  
  
'Mining asteroid. In system, at least.'  
  
Trowa nodded. He was watching Heero from peripheral vision as they walked through the trailer lot. His eyes turned forward when Heero caught him. 'Sucky reason for a visit, huh?'  
  
He should get used to hearing that, he thought. Everyone would want to commiserate. Everyone would want the comfort of sharing their mourning. That was natural, too. But he still didn't want to talk about it. He said, 'Six is older.'  
  
'Kids grow up. I never met him til he showed up on my doorstep.'  
  
Heero had forgotten that. 'You were the easiest to access. Shuttles to Earth have more dedicated security. He might have thought Preventers wouldn't believe him, if he thought to contact them at all.'  
  
'I'm glad he found his way here. Kind of a minor miracle he found me. Scary.' Trowa walked with his hands in his pockets. That indicated he was at ease with his surroundings, not worried about safety, even if Heero could see the bulge of a gun holster at the small of his back, and another at the left ankle. 'Maybe he was right not to trust the Preventers.'  
  
'You never trusted cops,' Heero observed.  
  
'They usually don't deserve it. Listen, who'd you tell Six was here?'  
  
'No-one. Katherine said you're pretending he's your son.'  
  
'Yeah. It's the simplest story. No one will question it.'  
  
'He could pass for yours. His hair is lighter than Duo's was.'  
  
'He's a good kid. I'm keeping him.'  
  
'He may not be yours to keep.'  
  
'Whose is he then?' Trowa demanded in sudden aggression. Heero hunched his shoulders. 'Hilde's? She's dropped off the face of the earth.'  
  
'She won't come.'  
  
Trowa looked at him sharply. 'You've spoken to her?'  
  
'Not for half a dozen years.'  
  
'How can you be so sure, then? If she knew Duo was dead, she might want the boy.'  
  
'She's dead, too.'  
  
Trowa blinked rapidly. Then said, 'Shit. Shit. When? How?'  
  
'Suicide.' Trowa was surprised. Heero concluded, 'Six didn't tell you. Maybe Duo never told him.'  
  
'I don't think he knows. Shit. Look, maybe he shouldn't.'  
  
Heero could understand that decision. It was good that someone was stepping up to make decisions on Six's behalf, until he was old enough to make them for himself. 'Has he been-- all right?'  
  
'Hell, would you be? _I'm_ not all right.' Trowa kicked a clump of dirt apart as they passed a choppy patch. 'He has night terrors. He didn't see it, but he heard.'  
  
He tried not to register that to his face. He put his hands in his own pockets, then.  
  
'Sorry. I didn't ask how you were, Heero.'  
  
'Surprised.' They met another stretch of fencing. There were teenagers on the other side, mothers and fathers, screaming children. Flashing lights and brassy blasts of horns and music. Overwhelming distraction.  
  
'So was I,' Trowa said. 'That he died first. The war's been over so long. I thought all of it was over, these days.' He paused by Heero. 'It's easy to get lulled into a sense that everything's normal. Peaceful. Under control. I think Duo's the only one of us who accepted that it never would be.'  
  
'Then why didn't he prepare better? Why didn't he prepare Six?'  
  
'I couldn't answer that.'  
  
'Are we walking to anywhere in particular?'  
  
Trowa looked at him. 'I figured if you had anything to say, you might feel more comfortable saying it out here, away from Kathy and Six.'  
  
He didn't. And he didn't think that was why Trowa had guided him away from the two people he wanted to protect from his own emotion. Heero waited silently.  
  
It took longer than he thought, but it burst out of Trowa in a torrent of anger. 'I dunno, Heero. I dunno. It's fucked up. It's like he was up against a stacked deck, and now we are, unless we just pretend it didn't happen. Only now there's this kid in the middle and he's not going to be safe until this is handled.'  
  
Cheers erupted from a booth where children fired water guns at targets. 'Then we handle it.'  
  
'So you're in? It might take all of us. Quatre's coming in, and Wufei's interfacing with the police on L2 to find out what they know. Together--'  
  
'All of you have lives to lose now. I don't.'  
  
'You've been singing that song for fifteen years. It was bullshit then, it's bullshit now.'  
  
'I didn't write the song.' Heero watched a clown pass a large stuffed animal to one of the children, who displayed it proudly to her fellows. 'You have a child to protect,' he said. 'Quatre has a whole world of his own on Earth. Wufei has regulations to follow. These things matter.'  
  
'Just because you're not attached to anything doesn't mean you're valueless.'  
  
He faced Trowa, looking up to meet his eyes. 'When this is over, you can argue with me about relativity.'  
  
Trowa's jaw clenched. 'Fuck you.'  
  
'Not recently.'  
  
He stared a second. Then laughed, and the anger leeched away from him. 'You and me both, sister. Let's go in. Kathy's probably having kittens in there. You know she cooked all afternoon.'  
  
'Cooked?'  
  
Trowa grinned at him, tiny lines forming at the sides of his mouth. 'She's actually improved. A little. You're safe. Mostly.'  
  
He had dried vegetable jerky in his bag. He was very glad he'd thought to bring it.  
  
'It's different, isn't it.' Heero let a breath out through the nose. 'Knowing he's gone forever.'  
  
Trowa jerked in a sharp breath as Heero finished his exhale. He said, 'It's fucking unbearable.'


	3. Chapter 3

In movies, whenever the hero had a flashback it was all one single stream of memory. A perfect narrative with a beginning and an end and a neat transition back into reality.  
  
Trowa wanted that. He fought for it, every night, from the moment the light went off and Kathy's breathing went gentle and then slow, but Trowa's stayed shallow with the wild flighty mess of his thoughts.  
  
He couldn't say memory. Pieces. Some things came bright and clear-- exactly what the scar on Duo's knee looked like. The way he'd gone chasing Kathy through the trailer one night to tickle her, and Trowa had thought, distinctly, that this was probably what family was, and he ought to try and remember it. He hadn't, not 'til the second night Heero was with them, and they sat at the rickety folding table outside together so they'd all fit and after a few false starts none of them managed a single comfortable sentence at all.  
  
Pieces. Hilde had started fighting for Duo before Trowa even knew he was the competition. They'd fought or something-- he didn't remember that because he hadn't cared, back then-- and then there'd been Mariemaia. He didn't know how Duo had found out about it, except that he'd shown up with Heero. Grinning like they were just on holiday and it was an especially amusing road trip.  
  
He wanted the movie in his mind. He wanted the focus to widen up and tell him everything that was suddenly important to know, to have known all along. Hilde had started fighting for Duo from the very moment Duo visited her in Intensive Care after the Libra. Trowa had been there to see it because Duo had said-- what had he said?  
  
Please, he'd begged. Trowa could see, then, in his mind, Duo's hands clasped dramatically together at his chest. Please come with me. I need a reason to get out of there the second it turns mushy.  
  
Irritated. Duo had ignored every single one of Trowa's cues, once they were actually in the girl's room. Trowa had figured it was over the second Duo took her hand voluntarily, and he'd left them to it.  
  
Except then there'd been Mariemaia, and Duo had come crawling into his tent-- knees sliding in the nylon of Trowa's sleeping bag, an incautious hand landing too-hard on Trowa's hip, and then scratching chilly fingers up his bare ribs. Hilde? Trowa had asked. Had he? Maybe he hadn't, not until later. He wished he could remember if he'd asked right then, because then he would know if he'd been an outright idiot, or just a fool who fell in love, like all the other mortals.  
  
If he had the movie playing in his head, how long would it be before the good part was over and there was the inevitable scene of Duo crashing out of bed in a huff, pulling up his pants in histrionics and Jesus suffering Christ, Trowa, I need you to make a god-damn decision here--  
  
He hadn't, so Duo had, and the decision had been Hilde, who showed up carting a fucking bassinet, how was that for Jesus Christ, because the girl knew how to take the long view.  
  
And then Kathy would sigh and roll over and reach across the air between their beds. Trowa would close his eyes as she stroked his hair, her fingers drawing soothing abstracts against his skull.  
  
'Go to sleep, little lambkin,' she would whisper, and it was only because it was too much effort and he was so tired that he wouldn't tell her not to call him that.

+

Six found Trowa's old trick bike. Heero found Six finding Trowa's old trick bike. For the good of them all, Kathy was at practise between shows, and didn't have to be bothered with niggling details like a dubious safety record.  
  
The kid went jumping away, the tarp falling noisily back into place when Heero cleared his throat. 'Mr Yuy,' he said, guilt in evidence in every cringing line of his small body.  
  
Heero spent hours prowling the fairgrounds. He told Trowa it was to keep watch for suspicious faces. He told Kathy it was because he liked air and privacy. He didn't have to tell Six anything one way or the other. Six held him in awe, or something uncomfortably like it.  
  
Duo had always been the first to point out Heero's many human flaws. Loudly.  
  
'I can't believe he still has that piece of junk,' Heero offered. Six dug a furrow in the sparse grass with the tip of his shoe--one of the shoes Heero had bought him. Heero didn't like being taller than him. It didn't seem right.  
  
'Is it broke?'  
  
'It hasn't run since after the war. Maybe longer.' The rubber heel of the boy's foot caught on a weed, and he stilled. 'Do you know where he keeps his toolbox?'  
  
Six brightened at that. 'Oh, yeah! It's by the cutting table in the workshop...'  
  
Heero's face stayed blank out of habit. Six buried his slip with teeth in his lower lip; he finished almost gamely.  
  
'I mean, I think I saw some of _Trowa's_ tools in the storage unit in back of the trailer.'  
  
Kathy was in performance until seven. Trowa wouldn't be done til nine. They had time to--'Go get it,' Heero said, and flung the tarp back with a crisp snap of plastic weave. Out in the bright colonial daylight the bike looked rusty and dented and dusty. It might take them more than an afternoon.  
  
Six came back carrying a toolbox no larger than a first-aid box. He splayed it open on the ground by the bike. It held a few old wrenches, a hammer without a haft. Two finishing nails, that Six plucked out with his child-sized fingers. 'Mr Yuy... You don't have to play with me,' he said. 'It's okay, really.'  
  
'Is there a usable tool in that?' He picked up the hammer head. It was as rusty as the bike. Six handed him a socket wrench--it was, just as Heero had asked, the only useful item in the kit. Heero had almost not remembered that Six had spent all his life around tools in Duo's scrap business. He could probably repair the bike himself. Maybe he would rather, instead of dealing with Heero. But Trowa had been explicit. Keep him company. Keep him close. The line of Six's back when he twisted to reach, the way his straight hair fell into a fringe over his forehead; it almost fooled Heero into thinking--  
  
Heero added, indistinctly, 'It drives me crazy how he does this. Cart around-- broken things. Quatre calls it “letting go issues.”'  
  
The bolts turned when he put his shoulder into it. Six found a can of WD40, which made it faster. Heero pulled the cover free from the engine. Trowa had at least drained the oil, whenever it had last been used. Six knew where that was, too, and fetched it without being asked. They had to patch a tyre and pump it full, but it wasn't as bad as Heero had thought it might be.  
  
'Do you think it'll run?' Six asked, after almost two hours of quiet work.  
  
'Probably.' It would. It might not take them far, though, and he wouldn't bet on it functioning well in the cage or on the jump ramps. He kept his eyes on tightening the tickler. 'After the war, when people started to know who we were. Trowa came up with a daredevil act. Flames and a jump ramp. Duo hated it. Fire hazard.' He'd said Trowa was going to break his stupid neck, if it didn't light him up first. But Trowa said no-one would believe a Gundam Pilot could die on a bike, anyway.  
  
'My dad liked things to be real safe.'  
  
It just seemed like a harder world, suddenly. Darker. Why it had been Duo, when everyone loved Duo, and was the only one with a child-- probably Duo had been stupid, going out there alone with one weapon against however many men had attacked them. Maybe he'd known. Maybe it had just been for Six. Maybe by then it had been too late to do anything smarter, like tell anyone he was in trouble.  
  
Six wore an uncertain frown. He was chewing a nail ragged. All of his nails were chewed to the quick; some of his fingers were bloody even.  
  
'He did that too,' Heero said.  
  
Six took his hand from his mouth. 'I'm not much like him.'  
  
He didn't know if he should reassure Six that he wasn't or correct him. 'Some,' he hesitated. Then, 'You don't talk as much.'  
  
'I can if you want me to.'  
  
'I wouldn't mind.'  
  
He came to his feet to polish the mirrors with the dirty oil rag. He went straight for what Heero might have expected him to, if Heero had known anything about kids who had just lost parents; but somehow he didn't, and so he wasn't prepared for any of it.  
  
'You're a war hero. Like Trowa. And my dad.'  
  
'With your dad, yeah.'  
  
'You knew him back then?'  
  
'He was my first friend.'  
  
'How old were you?' Six was shyly moved to add, 'My first friend was Daniqua. She lived two doors up.'  
  
'Fifteen. Duo, too.'  
  
Six was impressed. 'You were old. You never had friends before that?'  
  
'They kept me busy.' He remembered where the gas hookup was. Six helped him with the hose, in the way as much as anything, but they filled the tank with only a minor spill. The dirt soaked it up without protest. Heero reached awkwardly over Six's shoulder, until it was easier just to let him do it and give instructions. 'Got that gas cap? Screw it on tight.'  
  
He obeyed. 'Did you kill people?' he said. 'During the war?'  
  
Sucker punch. He was like Duo, who had always known how to say exactly the right thing to make you wince. Heero rubbed his forehead on his sleeve. 'Too many people. Yeah.'  
  
'Did my dad?'  
  
No right answer to that, either. 'Yeah,' he said honestly.  
  
Six adjusted the mirrors very carefully, very professionally. His voice was small, though. 'But you were good guys.'  
  
'That's what they told us. I'm... not sure there were any good guys.'  
  
'You mean you might have been bad guys?' Wide eyes. He didn't smile as much as Duo, either.  
  
Maybe Duo hadn't been as much Duo as Heero remembered. The things he did remember were already changing. It was easy to think that Duo had always been sure of himself and of the world. Harder to remember how he'd changed when Hilde died.  
  
Angry. Furious, which Heero had understood, and frightened, which he hadn't. Heero had sat with him at the hospital, not asking Duo if he wanted to wash the blood out of his shirt. He knew what it was like to want to see it there, so you knew what had happened when you started to wonder if you'd just dreamed it.  
  
I thought she was just leaving again, Duo had said. Stupid bitch. I would have helped her.  
  
Maybe that was true, and maybe it wasn't. It was easier to be a bad guy than a perfect one. Mistakes were always easier to make.  
  
He swung a leg over the seat and sat gingerly. The engine coughed on the first kick-start, but leaned into the second with a looser throttle and struggled to life. It purred like one of Trowa's cats. 'Jump on,' he told Six.  
  
A little hesitation first. Safe or not, Duo would have been on board immediately, telling you the whole way everything that could go wrong. Six climbed on behind him, not quite large enough to fill the passenger seat. He meekly wrapped his hands through Heero's belt, but grabbed his waist with both arms the moment Heero released the brake.  
  
'Around the trailer park?' Rhetorical question; Heero was already easing onto the dusty path.  
  
Unexpected answer, being: 'There's a back road that doesn't jam up like the motorway. I heard Raoul talk about it.'  
  
They could. If they didn't get caught. If Six was restless it was better to let him have a little freedom while it could still be supervised. He might be. Heero'd heard the argument with Trowa, night before--you're not really my dad. And then, I'm sorry, I don't mean to be ungrateful. I'm really sorry.  
  
Trowa had spent half the night in Heero's tent, tense and rattled from the fight and without enough experience to figure out what he'd done wrong.  
  
I'm really sorry, Hilde had said, when Duo hauled her out of the bath, and Heero had only just heard her over the voice of the operator as he called for the ambulance. Same exact tone.  
  
'Show me where,' Heero said.  
  
The road, as promised, was much emptier, almost abandoned after all the constant noise of the circus. Old power plant at the end of it, nuclear site, abandoned and gated off probably before Alliance had ever been conceived. Heero put the bike through all the gears, pleased except for the choppy ride when he gripped the shift too hard, pleased, maybe, too, or something less easy to define, when Six didn't take his arms away until they slowed to a stop by the chained old lot. They were close to the inner shielding, here, miles outside the city. Close to Space on the other side of it.  
  
'I think we fixed the bike,' Heero said, to fill the silence, and Six's little tenor went tripping over his baritone like the stutter of the engine.  
  
'Do you have a gun?'  
  
'Yes.' Not rhetorical, that.  
  
'Can you teach me how to use it?'  
  
Trowa would kill him for it. Duo would have. But it wasn't an idle curiosity, and Six was serious as death.  
  
'How old are you?' Heero asked. He twisted the key slowly in the ignition, and let the bike settle to the right, propped up on his leg.  
  
'Eleven.' After a moment, 'Sir.'  
  
'Old enough to learn.' Duo would have hated him for it. And, maybe, understood, given the circumstances. Heero reached for the glock under his coat. He ejected the clip and held the gun out, low, at his side, for the boy to take. 'You'll need to know what it feels like empty first.'  
  
Fingers closing around it, above his, on the butt.  
  
'Be sure, Six.'  
  
Six did what probably none of them had ever done, and took that to heart. God, he was right, he was nothing like Duo; nothing like Heero, who had carried a gun even before Odin Lowe had trained him to shoot it. Nothing like any of them, who had been younger than eleven when they started asking questions about war.  
  
The little hand on the gun closed tight; then released.  
  
'Do you think that's why they killed him?' Six asked, little voice, timid question, late question. Something not at all small and not young any more in that, too, a man's need to know why, a man's need to know so he could do something about it. Just like they had been. 'Because during the war he killed people too?'  
  
'I don't know,' Heero said. 'But we're going to find out.' He let the gun rest on his thigh, thumb rub on the barrel. Guns had always been comfortable in his hand­ either hand, really. It didn't feel so good at that moment. Foreign, almost, heavy. He said, 'Some people-- most of them, they think that it's killing someone that makes you a killer. That's a nice thought, but it's a lie. Having one of these. Knowing you could aim it at another human being and pull the trigger. Knowing you'd be willing to do it-- that makes you a killer.'  
  
Awful thing to say. Word for word what Odin had said to him. He didn't turn to see Six's face while he said it, didn't want to know what it looked like from this side. He remembered that, with the clarity missing from everything else lately. But he'd been old enough to ask. Himself, and Six too. Old enough to think it was a choice, and not--a regret in the making.  
  
'My dad could do that. You could. Even my mom. She was a soldier too.'  
  
Until it killed her. Killed Duo.  
  
Trowa was going to kill him, for this. He would notice, when they got back, whether Heero told him or not.  
  
Six had his thumbnail in his mouth again. There was a thin line of crimson from the damage.  
  
Heero dismounted the bike, and put the gun on the warm seat, between Six's knees. 'If I'd thought you weren't going to think it through carefully, I'd have said no right away.' Six bit hard on his thumb, until Heero nudged it away from his mouth. 'We can come back tomorrow. Or the next day. Next year.'  
  
He controlled it for a few seconds longer than Heero expected him to. His eyes filled, though, finally. He bit hard on his thumb, then scrambled off the bike, all knees and elbows. The hands went deep into his pockets, shoulders hunched defencively.  
  
'Damn,' Heero said, or maybe just thought, a flinch of frustration with himself, with the necessity, the helpless feeling that he didn't know how to comfort the boy. It was like reaching across miles for Six's shoulder, just to brush it with his finger so weakly it might not even have been felt. 'I'm sorry. For all of it.'  
  
Six wiped his face on his sleeve. 'Can I ask again later? About the gun.'  
  
'Yes. Whenever you're ready.'  
  
'Thank you, sir.'  
  
'My friends call me Heero.'  
  
'Yeah, but you're old.' Hastily, 'I mean older. I mean an adult. Dad says-- said--'  
  
The finger went back in his mouth. Heero, who had always thought you should do what you feel and always known he did it badly, made a singularly graceless miscalculation. He tried to hug Six.  
  
Who went squirming away fast as possible, shoving just to make it clear he meant it.  
  
'Sorry,' Heero said, inadequate and embarrassed.  
  
Six stared at his feet. 'Take me back now, please.'

+

He was starting to jump when people came finding him after shows.  
  
It was Quatre, this time. That made him a little jumpy, too, but Quatre wasn't much in the public eye, these days, and even if he'd been followed, no-one was going to believe that even Farmhand Winner would bum through L3 if it wasn't to see Trowa Barton.  
  
Trowa said, 'Don't hug me, I'm all sweaty,' and Quatre answered, 'Like I care,' and did it anyway. He came away with his nose scrunched, but so did Trowa. At least Trowa smelled human. 'What is that?' he demanded. 'Did you wear your horse clothes here?'  
  
'They're my clothes clothes.'  
  
'Maybe you don't notice anymore, but trust me, that's a little too much nature.'  
  
'No-one else complained,' Quatre said, with great dignity. 'Are you done? Can you leave yet?'  
  
'Yeah. Just let me tell Kathy, or she'll have half the staff out running us down.'  
  
'Oh. I didn't realise you were still living with your sister.'  
  
Trowa had his face in a damp towel, and that was all that stopped him from flinging it at the other man. He snapped, 'Oh, because everything's perfect out in Ranchland with the underwear model?'  
  
Quatre looked remorseful. Trowa was quite sure he didn't. In fact-- something he wouldn't admit until much later-- he was more than a little eager for a good fight. Maybe he could be blamed and maybe he couldn't, but reality was they were all stretched a little past what was healthy. It devolved almost as quickly as people could clear the changing room.  
  
'I'm sorry,' Quatre said, 'but it came out wrong and I didn't mean it.'  
  
'You're always sorry, but it doesn't stop you being judgy and bitter--'  
  
'Bitter?' Quatre repeated. His voice went up a notch.  
  
'Because you gave up your company but you still think you've got to have the perfect life and the perfect boyfriend.'  
  
That hit the right pitch. Quatre flared up like an oil-soaked wick, and then they were really going at each other. Trowa almost enjoyed it.  
  
'Maybe I wouldn't have to be bitter if you could keep your nose out of my romantic choices once in a blue moon!' Quat hollered at him.  
  
'Defencive, much? Oh, I'll admit the model is better than that writer or the travel agent, but you always settle, and you know it. You think if you settle you can get away with being lukewarm. You don't get to walk in here making comments when we both know you take the easy road.'  
  
'I forgot I was speaking to the expert,' Quatre retorted. 'You know, you're not the only person who didn't get to be with the one he wanted, so maybe if you'd remember that occasionally when you'd talk to me you won't just yell all the damn time!'  
  
'I'm not YELLING,' he yelled, and just like that, all the fun went out of it. They stood puffing out chilly L3 winter and glaring at each other, and he finally began to feel a little foolish. Quatre's face was flushed, his arms crossed sullenly over the breast of his smelly coat. 'Who was it?' Trowa said.  
  
Quatre shifted one foot to the other, then sighed. 'Not you, if that's what's making you cringe. Stop looking at me that way.'  
  
'I'm not looking at you any way.' Kathy's head made an appearance around the flap of canvas they used for a door. Trowa scowled at her. It was like she had radar; whenever he fought with Quatre she was suddenly there. At least this time she wasn't likely to take Quatre's side. That had gotten annoying during Quatre's divorce.  
  
'Sorry,' he got around to saying. 'And I wasn't cringing.'  
  
'It's--'  
  
'And if you're lusting after someone, you should just freaking tell him.'  
  
'All right,' Quatre finished. 'What makes you think I didn't? I'm not quite that cowardly, really.'  
  
'No. Polite. Too damned polite to open your mouth and say please for fear of pressuring or embarrassing him into anything-- untoward. That's just the kind of word you'd use, too.'  
  
'Vocabulary aside, I really don't think I need your love advice down in _Ranchland_.'  
  
'It's not Wufei, is it?' he said. 'Or-- it's Heero, isn't it. Well Heero's here and if anyone needs to get laid, it's him. Dump the underwear model. It's not like he's your soulmate. He's not even your intellectual equal.'  
  
'My god, you're a jerk. I had a better reception from OZ battalions.'  
  
They were fighting again, which meant they were going to have to apologise again. Kathy had made a slick exit sometime when he wasn't looking. The entire changing room was dead empty, and so was the tent outside, except for Tabitha and Gassy, sweeping between the risers and pretending they couldn't hear every word being shouted right next door.  
  
'Oh, never mind,' Quatre said. 'I just want to see Six. I'll find a hotel then.'  
  
He bought a little time pulling on a jumper and pretending to fix the tangles in his hair. 'I'm sorry,' he mumbled then. 'You don't need a hotel. I was out of line. A lot.'  
  
'A little. Some.' Quatre rubbed his face. He looked tired, in the sideways glances Trowa took of him. 'So was I. Sorry, too. You know we only argue because I know you'll forgive me. I keep thinking, if I could just get a full night's sleep...'  
  
'I know.' He sat on his costume trunk, and Quatre sat next to him. 'And I'm sorry I said that stuff about the underwear model.'  
  
'The underwear model has a name.'  
  
'Is it serious with him?'  
  
'He's been living with me for four years, Trowa.'  
  
And obviously having a delightful affect on Quatre's temper. 'I know his name,' Trowa admitted. He picked at a loose thread in his sleeve. 'If he makes you happy, I'm happy too.'  
  
Quat hunched his shoulders. Old habit, that. It looked a little silly on a man, and even sillier in that thick cow-hide coat Quatre had taken to wearing after he started breeding horses. 'Same with you and Kathy. I don't mean to be judgmental. What you two have works for you. And I can hardly say you've done a bad job with Six.'  
  
'I mean to continue with him.' This was as private as they were likely to get, given the crowd he was suddenly housing, so he went the extra mile and flat-out admitted it. 'He said... I guess Duo told him that if he was in trouble, I was pretty much bottom of the list for help.'  
  
'He came to you first.'  
  
'He needed a place to land. I was handy.' He pulled the thread, which of course turned out to be a long one, clear up to his elbow and messing up the entire sleeve. 'Did Duo...'  
  
'Duo wasn't a part of your life after he left. Six wasn't.' Quat hesitated weirdly, and Trowa wondered what he'd swallowed that sprang to mind first. 'He was for us. No point in lying-- you know I want to take him. You know Wufei would. It's just what we feel. It's just hard to let go of-- all of them. I'm sorry.'  
  
'I never said I was going to keep him from anyone. Just don't even think about it. I don't want to fight you in court.'  
  
'Court!'  
  
'It's the worst thing for all of us, especially Six. If he even suspects we're fighting, he'll disappear. We would've.' He broke the thread and whipped his hand until it fell to the dirt. 'I never asked him to cut me out of the loop.'  
  
Quatre hunched his shoulders again. Then he dropped his head down on to his knees. 'I know,' he said quietly. 'He wasn't perfect. He wasn't even always good.'  
  
That was moody. Trowa didn't know what to say to it.  
  
'I won't fight you.' Quatre's fingers made claws against his skull. 'I can't promise for Wufei. He and Duo were...'  
  
He hadn't known that. It made him go kind of cold and then kind of sickly warm, it made him almost kind of imagine things, except not really, because Duo-- the Duo in his imagination had never even been with Hilde, and that was biological fact. Biological fact. For someone who made a big deal out of his priorities, Duo had sure left a tangled mess behind him.  
  
'I'll ask Six,' he said hoarsely, the best he could manage. 'I'll respect his choice.'  
  
'He's eleven, Trow--'  
  
'What's that even mean? You were an adult at eleven. We both were.'  
  
'Just because we were making an adult's decisions doesn't mean we were prepared or healthy for it. Do you really want him to have the childhoods we did? Wouldn't you rather he be protected from that? It's enough that he'll have to live without his own father.'  
  
'I should ask him what he wants.'  
  
'No, you shouldn't. He's a child. And he just lost a dad who used to make all the decisions for him. He needs a little of that right now. Be his father, if that's what you want, but you have to _be_ until he is ready to start choosing for himself.'  
  
He really honestly couldn't remember what Duo the Adult had looked like. He had pictures, somewhere, from parties he hadn't attended and some even that Duo had sent him-- a card, once a year for the boy's birthday, and sometimes it was a school picture and sometimes it was a baseball game on a burnt-out lawn behind a grungy little house, and there'd be a little corner of a face with a little hint of a grin that Trowa had always buried at the bottom of a sock drawer. He'd bottomed out on the things he really remembered about Duo, because everything he remembered was-- old, and not who Duo had been by the time he'd died. Six was who'd he'd been, really, and Six was the only communication there had been between the two of them until it was too late and Six was all there was ever going to be again. It wasn't a second chance. It was just that Six had come to him, even though he could have gone to the others, and that meant something. It had to.  
  
He supposed it had been bound to happen. Supposed he'd been gearing toward it for a while. It was what you did, when you lost someone. It was the natural thing. Felt unnatural, though. Felt horrible. He hated crying.  
  
I hate crying, Duo muttered. Go look at some other freak show.  
  
'I really want to,' he said, except his voice didn't make it past the clog in his throat. Hard to say if Quatre heard, except that Quatre was looking at him, weary like it hurt so much he was getting used to it. 'Be his father. I know how much Duo invested in being a father. I can do this for him, for Duo. Love his kid the way he would have.'  
  
Quatre reached down and plucked his hand out of the tight fist he'd made around his cuff. 'I know you will.'  
  
They sat in silence like that, Quat's fingers tight around his. Long enough for him to remember, arguing aside, he was always glad when Quatre visited.  
  
'I didn't know you'd thought about kids,' he said, when he could speak without losing it.  
  
'I spent my childhood being the all-important male heir.' Quatre didn't let him go yet, so Trowa didn't make him. He was looking off into the mirror, but he wasn't looking at their reflection. His eyes weren't focused. 'I don't have a business, anymore, I don't have a need. But sure, I think about it.'  
  
'You'd be a good father.'  
  
'It's not likely, though, is it. Unless Takeo's been really stuffing those boxer briefs.' His eyes slid over to Trowa's. 'Come on. That was a little funny. Takeo's a girly boy. I finally admitted it. Smile at least a little?'  
  
He laughed, even if he couldn't put a lot of force behind it. 'Please tell me he doesn't call you Daddy.'  
  
Pale eyebrows quirked. 'Only on special occasions.'

+

It finally hit the news, top billing over the other Thursday night prime-time.  
  
 _Gundam Pilot Duo Maxwell murdered in home.  
  
Controversial Resistance leader Duo Maxwell killed in what appears to be a vicious and targeted shooting.  
  
Local L2 hero dead; son missing._  
  
They showed the chief investigator on L2, who refused to confirm anything. Wufei was standing right behind the man, blank-faced and drawn, his crisp Preventers uniform drawing shouted questions from the crowd of reporters. There was no hiding that Six had gone missing, and there was all wild kinds of speculation about kidnapping and ransom and even some enterprising soul who came up with a hotline for missing children to occupy hours of broadcast. At the root of the story, L2 was still a place where death was frequent and frequently violent. The consensus was that Duo had laster longer than anyone had expected him to, and shame about the boy.  
  
Kathy put in a film for Six, then, but he'd already heard plenty of it. It hadn't been much of a dinner, anyway, the two of them and Heero.  
  
The lights in the trailer went low an hour after Heero retreated to his tent next to it. He spent an hour after that cleaning his already clean gun, loading and reloading the magazine. It was a depressing way to spend the evening.  
  
He expected Trowa, who usually came out to sit with him before bed. Or maybe Quatre, who had seemed to want to speak to him alone when he'd come by. But both men would still be off at Trowa's show, and anyway the step was wrong for an adult. Lighter. Clumsier. He was sitting up to unzip the door flap before Six arrived, carrying a tray of milk and biscuits, somewhat spilled.  
  
'Mr Yuy?'  
  
'Thanks.' He rescued the milk just as it tipped, and licked his knuckles dry. It was warm. He didn't particularly understand the theory behind a large glass of warm liquid when you were trying to go to sleep, but Katherine sent it out to him every night.  
  
'Thank you,' he said again, when he realized Six hadn't left yet. 'You... could sit down if you want.'  
  
Six didn't, but then he was short enough to stand inside without threatening the spring-rods or the hanging lantern. He said, stated, 'It's going to be different, now, isn't it.'  
  
Heero parsed that out carefully, and the solemn face looking down at him. 'I think,' he answered, when he was sure of the words, 'yes. We'll have to be more careful.'  
  
'They didn't show my picture.'  
  
Wufei's work, Heero was sure. He wondered how Wufei had managed it.  
  
Six drew a deep breath. 'About the gun--'  
  
'I have something for you,' Heero interrupted quickly. 'I meant to give it to you earlier, but private is better.' He opened a pocket of his duffle for the medal. The tissue paper wrapping crinkled, but softly, worn from years of travel. 'Here,' he said, and held it out.  
  
Six went down on a knee to look. Heero turned his wrist out to the light of the overhead lantern. 'This is--was, Duo's. I've had it since the war. It should really be yours though.'  
  
'It's Saint Christopher.'  
  
'Yeah. Your dad must have told you.'  
  
'Dad liked a lot of the saints. He didn't like to go to mass, because he said the Pope was a jerk and organised religion is a bunch of hooey, but he liked the saints.' Six polished the medal with the edge of his shirt. 'You all really loved my dad,' he said quietly.  
  
'He was easy to love,' Heero answered.  
  
'I think my dad had a boyfriend.' The boy looked up. 'I thought it might be Mr Chang. But maybe it was you?'  
  
Once, maybe, but Duo was smarter than that, and Heero was quite aware he never would have made Duo happy, even if he'd wanted to be that person. Duo would have exhausted him. Duo had exhausted him even without a relationship. When he shook his head, though, Six's face fell.  
  
'My dad never told me anything.' The medal disappeared into Six's fist. 'It's like half of what I thought I knew was a lie. I thought he was just a scrap man. And there's you and Trowa and Mr Chang and Mr Winner, and you're all Gundam-- all Gundam Pilots, and I always thought that was just a story in books, but it was all of you.'  
  
'Yes,' Heero said. 'And Duo. He was... the best.'  
  
He traced the figure on the medal. 'Mr Yuy... I've decided. About the gun.'  
  
It didn't occur to him-- well, much, to say no. He knew that he should. He knew it was a mistake, but he also knew it was too late to unmake it.  
  
'Please, Mr Yuy. I need to learn it. I could have gone out there and helped him at least, if I'd known how to shoot.'  
  
'Firing new bullets won't bring back the ones that killed him.' The gun was under his pillow. He took it out, took it out of the leather holster, and turned the butt-end toward the boy. 'Duo knew how to shoot. It wasn't enough. If it had been, we wouldn't be here talking about making you a killer.'  
  
Six's chest heaved with uneven breaths. 'I have to know. Please. Trowa won't want me to and Miss Kathy doesn't understand. But they'll come now. They'll come to get me, now that there's people looking for me. Please, Mr Yuy.' His voice cracked.  
  
Heero, something's happened. Heero, he's gone.  
  
Shaky feeling in his chest. It hadn't gone away yet. He kept expecting it to.  
  
He wrapped Six's hand over the handle, set the little fingers right with his own callused ones. 'It isn't loaded,' he said. 'You can practise. Lock open the action, like this. Yes. Now check the chamber and the magazine. When you shoot it-- when you shoot it, you want to keep both your eyes open, not like in movies. Both eyes open, and looking at your target, not down the barrel. But that's not the hardest part. It's the trigger. It needs control, and calm. If you're not calm, the recoil will blow the shot wide, and you'll miss. Sometimes... sometimes all you get is one shot. You have to be ready for it.'  
  
Six looked up at him. 'Thank you,' he whispered.


	4. Chapter 4

When he was fifteen, Wufei had been brave-- brash-- and prone to headlong plunges. He'd followed one wild impulse onto the deck of Treize Khushrenada's barge, where he'd abandoned the Gundam built for the very purpose of obliterating such men with economy and efficiency, and crashed through a window to duel OZ's general with his father's saber. Brave-- brash-- it had led to the most humiliating defeat of his life; he still dreamed of it, waking in a sweat with his knees throbbing as if from being forced to kneel. And in another headlong plunge, he'd determined immediately that in his defeat he should die to restore his honour.  
  
He was almost wishing right now he had done. There was too much appeal in thinking about inky black silence, somewhere numb where he wouldn't have to bear this assault of feeling.  
  
Goober, Duo said. You always want things to be easy.  
  
Wufei's mouth was dry.  
  
They were gathered on the grass in front of one of the trailers. Quatre sat on a blanket, lounging as he watched Trowa and Kathy instruct Six in handstands. Kathy, lithe as a cat, and Trowa, no less slim, demonstrated with all the flair of two born performers. Six was considerably less coordinated, falling twice before Trowa caught his ankles and supported him in the air. He couldn't let go for more than seconds before Six began to topple again, but Quatre and Kathy applauded dutifully. Heero's head turned to look, but his stare stayed focussed far away, watching the roving crowds beyond the fence.  
  
Quatre eyed him as he approached, seating himself at the edge of Quatre's blanket. 'Hello,' he murmured.  
  
'Just like that?' Quatre said. 'That's your entrance?'  
  
'You were expecting cartwheels?'  
  
'I won't clap for you, though.' On cue, Quatre brought his hands together again as Six managed a wobbly performance of nearly half a minute. The boy was all red face, brown hair flying to the ground. Upside-down smile.  
  
'He looks happy,' Wufei said.  
  
'He's trying hard to put on a good face.'  
  
'He always has.'  
  
'How are you doing, Wufei?'  
  
Already uncomfortable in the presence of men who were, in name at least, friends. They-- altered him. He never felt he could be himself, forgot who he was even in trying to be it.  
  
Not with Duo, of course. But Duo brought out the genuine in everyone.  
  
'Frustrated,' he said. 'Getting nowhere.'  
  
'Nowhere? You didn't learn anything?'  
  
'I feel completely shut down,' he muttered. 'Someone out there knows something, but no-one's sharing.'  
  
'It's only just come out in the news.'  
  
'I'm surprised it took so long. Considering who he was.'  
  
'I thought it was you,' Quatre remarked, startled but cautiously low-voiced. 'Keeping it quiet.'  
  
'I was. But I'm not alone.'  
  
At last shaking wrists collapsed, and Six tumbled to the ground in a breathless heap. He came up weaving a little, before Kathy caught him close in a motherly embrace.  
  
Should have been Duo, hugging him. Duo would tip him head over heels, Six squealing in equal fear and delight as Duo threatened to drop him. Listen to you giggle, sweet baby, Duo would say, fingers sneaking down Six's belly to tickle. Giggle monster, giggle cat-- get him, Wufei!  
  
Six had seen him. He came right up, before Wufei could do more than lift his hand in an aborted wave. 'Did you catch them, Mr Chang?' Six demanded. 'The men who killed my dad?'  
  
He shook his head slowly. 'We're getting closer,' he answered, knowing it would be disappointing. It was disappointing to him. 'Hello, Six. New skills?'  
  
'It's just passing time,' the boy said impatiently. 'I saw you on the news. How can't you know who did it yet?'  
  
It was only a child's misunderstanding, but it cut unexpectedly deep. 'It's a complicated case,' he defended himself. 'With no apparent witnesses.'  
  
He regretted that swiftly. Six was the witness, of course. Except that he'd been hiding, and had seen nothing. It was Six who dropped his eyes, now, chastised unfairly.  
  
Quatre interceded. Gently he said, 'He's trying, Six. Very hard.'  
  
Unwelcome interruption. Wufei almost resented the man for sticking up for him. Bit it did serve to remind Six of his manners. The boy blushed. Neutrally he offered an apology. 'I'm sorry, Mr Chang. Hello.'  
  
'Don't be. I want to catch them very badly.' Headache. It had been plaguing him for days. It made him tongue-tied, self-conscious. 'But-- I-- wanted to check on you, too. I missed-- missed you, Six.'  
  
'I'm okay.'  
  
'Trowa and Miss Kathy are good hosts?'  
  
'They've been real nice to me.' He looked over his shoulder at Kathy, real grin, this time, showing pert adoration noticeably lacking in his interaction with Wufei. 'Miss Kathy, she's an amazing cook. And Trowa takes me to see elephants and the horses and sometimes the big cats, except--' He turned back to Wufei with a flush. 'I don't like the big cats so much.'  
  
They were all looking at him torture Six. 'Want to walk a while?' Wufei asked.  
  
'Um-- okay.'  
  
'I brought some of your things. I have boxes in the car.'  
  
'My stuff? Thanks, Mr Chang.' More enthusiasm for that. Wufei smiled in relief. 'Did you find my iGame?'  
  
'I did. And the cartridges.'  
  
'Can I have it now-- I mean, after the walk?'  
  
Six is at least three times more polite than I ever was. Duo winked.  
  
Trowa finally interrupted-- he'd obviously been dying to, his jaw visibly clenched, brows tightly together. 'Hey,' he said. 'Didn't expect to see you so soon.'  
  
Ah, Wufei thought. He knows now. Not hostility, but a certain tension. Did he expect Wufei to make wild declarations of ownership? And of who? A dead man or a dead man's son? Neither of them wanted a scene; but the act of tip-toeing initiated the confrontation, all inevitably.  
  
Wufei inclined his chin in a nod that was stiff enough to break his neck. 'I won't stay long.'  
  
Kathy cleared her throat. 'I'll dig up an extra sleeping bag, if you don't mind bunking with the other two in the tent. You are staying overnight?'  
  
'If I'm welcome, please.'  
  
'Absolutely. And I'd better get cooking.'  
  
Quatre winced. Trowa speared him with those frowning eyes. 'What's that about?' he demanded.  
  
'Oh-- uh, sitting on a pebble.'  
  
'Ass.'  
  
Wufei watched in bemusement. No, he didn't fit here. There was no place for him in that banter, gruffly good-natured even it flew with edge. 'Six and I were going to walk a bit,' he said, and stood.  
  
Trowa's mouth turned down in a scowl. 'Don't leave the inner perimetre.'  
  
'He knows, Trowa.' Quatre stood too, using Wufei's dangling hand as a hoist without asking. 'Kathy, let me help you, please. I can certainly throw a stew together for supper.'  
  
Trowa hovered there with arms crossed and lower lip savaged between his teeth, seconds tripping by, before he muttered something about checking on the cats. Six, at least, looked as mystified as a child ought to, missing the meaning of the not-fighting. Quatre rolled his eyes at Wufei in a way that suggested comradeship in dire straits, Heero stared almost vacantly at him; Kathy blushed when he tried to speak, and hurried away. Wufei drew a breath that made his head pound.  
  
'I parked in the visitor lot out front,' Wufei said. 'Walk me to the car?'  
  
Six fell into step with him. He had grown, though it had been less than a month since Wufei had seen him. 'You've been well, really?'  
  
Six twisted back. Wufei looked, too. At first he thought it was only the flickers he'd been seeing at the edge of his vision for a week-- nothing to make sense of, and probably the product of too little sleep. But this time it was Heero, who didn't even hide that he was following them at a distance. 'Like I said,' Six echoed. 'They're all real nice to me. But they're starting to fight a lot. Is it because of me?'  
  
'No, Six,' Wufei corrected quickly, touched by that. 'We're all a little strung out. Missing your dad. Frustrated because... things aren't going the way we'd like.'  
  
'Mr Winner and Trowa were yelling at each other all yesterday and then Heero and Quatre yelled at each other this morning and Miss Kathy yells at all of them to stop yelling. I like Miss Kathy. She's real funny. Her voice gets really high when she's angry.'  
  
Wufei laughed. 'She's a character.'  
  
'Mr Chang? Why didn't my dad ever talk about Trowa?'  
  
Creeping in, all inevitable. Six was mature enough for his age, but that age was only eleven, and he'd been deliberately sheltered, loved for his innocence, and it wasn't for Wufei to spoil that with unwise words. He didn't want to say Trowa and Duo had fought, that Hilde had fought harder; he didn't want to say things like bad break ups and worse break ups, and loves that weren't equal. 'I think...' he said, 'I think they were the kind of friends that miss each other so much that talking about it is hard.'  
  
'I know what a gay is, Mr Chang.'  
  
Who's queer? Duo said, offended, or playing at it. Don't you know they got rid of gender, like, a century ago?  
  
So much for innocence, then. 'Your dad was a very private man,' Wufei tried.  
  
'You mean he was a liar. He lied to me. And to my mum.'  
  
'No, Six. I mean there were things he didn't feel he had to share with the world.'  
  
'I'm not the world.'  
  
'Maybe he was waiting for the right time.'  
  
Six put his hand to something he wore at the cord around his neck. Wufei didn't see it before his small hand covered it. Then a fist pushed hard across his eyes, leaving red and wet impressions of knuckles behind. 'You were his boyfriend,' Six said.  
  
'I loved him, yes.'  
  
'I tried really hard to understand everything but it's hard.' Six scraped his face dry again. 'And I don't understand and no-one tells me anything until I make them and I don't know what questions are all right or wrong or even what to ask.'  
  
It was cruel to make the child walk while he confessed his soul. Wufei came to a halt right where he was, to the side of a dirt 'path' between trailers, Heero hesitating some yards away. He crouched to Six's level and touched his palm tenderly to Six's face, using the broad side of his thumb to wipe hot tears away. 'You can ask me anything, Six. I'll do my best not to evade.'  
  
More tears. Ah, he'd been holding them back all this time after all, afraid to let his new hosts see his weakness. Wufei freed a tissue from his pocket, mopping flushed cheeks. 'It's all right,' he whispered. 'It's all right to miss him like this. It's all right to be worried and afraid and to have questions.'  
  
Six swiped at his face with his sleeve, both sleeves. Wufei brushed the tissue under his nose for him. 'I just wish I could hear him again,' Six admitted, face frozen. 'Sometimes I think I do, but I'm just dreaming. I hate waking up.'  
  
Look at him, Duo said. Sleeps like an angel. You hear what Hilde started calling him? Six. Six seconds into trouble, and six seconds batting those long eyelashes at her to get out of it. Can you believe I made that whole little boy?  
  
Wufei tried twice to speak out of a dry throat. 'I hear him sometimes. Maybe it's my-- imagination. Maybe I'm just wishing I could talk to him, like you. It feels very real when it happens.'  
  
Six looked up, wide-eyed, those long dark lashes clumped with damp and red-lined. 'You think my dad's an angel?'  
  
Lie to my kid, Duo snapped. Don't tell him shit like that. I don't care if you do believe in ghosts, you're not teaching him to think that crap is real.  
  
'I don't--' Wufei faltered trying to smile. 'Don't think he'd just leave us, when we're not ready to say goodbye.'  
  
'When we used to go to church they'd talk about heaven and Jesus. The priest said I could pray to God to ask my mum to come home and if she was listening, she'd hear. But that didn't ever work, and Dad was really angry that Father Andrews said that.'  
  
'It might've been a little irresponsible of Father Andrews, yes.'  
  
'When you hear my dad, what's he say? Is it about me?'  
  
He began to doubt his choice to share this. Was it wrong, did it somehow imply a fault in Six for not hearing what Wufei thought he did? He didn't even know if it was a real voice, or a self-delusion his grief insisted upon him. He had never believed in ghosts, not the ghost of his long-dead child bride, not the ghost of his grandparents and cousins who had died like Duo, in a sacrifice that ultimately changed nothing.  
  
He didn't know he, too, was crying, until Six touched him, tiny fingertips inscribing careful half-circles under his eyes. 'It's okay, Mr Chang,' he whispered.  
  
He squeezed Six's hands between his. 'Would it feel good, believing he was an angel?'  
  
'I don't know. I don't know if I believe in angels. Dad didn't. He said it was what you did while you were alive that mattered.'  
  
'He was right about that, Six.'  
  
'But... maybe it would be nice. If he'd talk to me too.'  
  
'Then listen for it. He might. You were the most important thing in the world to him, Six. If he's going to talk to anyone, it would be you.'  
  
He's stronger than you give him credit for. He's like you. He can handle real life.  
  
I don't want him to be like me, Wufei. I just barely want to be like me. I don't want him to have to be like me.  
  
'Six.' Wufei wet his lips. 'I wanted us to be a family, you and Duo and me. We ran out of time. But I'll always be willing, if it's what you decide you want.'  
  
He felt the spasm of Six's hands, all surprise. 'Like I would live with you now?' the boy said.  
  
'Uh—' He hadn't quite thought of it like that. Right now, immediately? Hadn't spoken to the others, who would surely have opinions-- but why should he have to listen and obey them? None of them had had the relationship Wufei had had, the right to ask this of Six, as a man who might have-- he wasn't a father, couldn't replace a father lost, but he could give a home, continuity-- his mind raced in fits and terrified starts. 'If you wanted to,' he said. 'I'm sure Trowa and Quatre and Heero will invite you too. None of us will be angry if you don't choose to stay. But I'd like it—' As Six's face fell.   
  
This child could be his son. The only son he'd ever leave behind, and if it wasn't quite as traditional as his clan might have hoped, there was still a deep spiritual need to know he wouldn't die without-- without this son he could have had with a man he'd grown to love.  
  
'I'd like it very much,' Wufei repeated, 'if you wanted to make a family with me. On L2 where your father wanted to stay, or on Earth.'  
  
'On Earth?' Six looked up quickly. 'I always wanted to go to Earth.'  
  
'It's beautiful there, where I live. We could build a life. You'd have school again, or I could even teach you--'  
  
'And I'd be safe with you.'  
  
Safe. Maybe. He couldn't promise it. Earth was where this Gundamium scam may have arisen, after all. 'As safe as I could manage,' he said though, and he meant it, even thinking--  
  
Duo snorted. You'd never quit Preventers. It's all purpose, fulfillment, yadda yadda.  
  
Why are you so attached to this half-life on L2? Wufei had retorted. One of their rare pitched fights, vicious airing of bitter things that really couldn't be blamed on each other, but had been, all the same. You've done your time here. So has Six.  
  
Because it should all mean something! It should all come to something, and if it doesn't I don't know what the hell the point is.  
  
You'll die here some day, no better off than if you'd never left at all.  
  
'Mr Chang?' Six said. 'You said you brought my iGame?'  
  
'Yeah.' Wufei climbed to his feet with creaking knees. He felt drained. But Six kept his hand, and he could almost feel the strength coming from that little body next to his, keeping him upright. They walked the rest of the way to the lot in silence, curving around the outer fence that housed off the circus staff from the actual grounds. On the other side of that fence walked dozens of couples just like he and Six, a man with a son that might be his in name and might be his only in absence of the one who ought to be there. Neither he nor Six looked at them.  
  
Wufei had packed two banker's boxes full, lids taped on, on the back seat of his rental car. He tugged one to the edge of the seat. 'This one's lighter, I think you can manage it.' He handed it out to Six. The boy wrestled it to the ground, took the pocket knife Wufei extended, and knelt in the grass to peer at his rescued treasures. Wufei had remembered right. It was the box with the game, wrapped in a plastic bag that held all the cartridges Wufei had been able to find in Six's room, most of them from under the unmade bed. There were fresh batteries, too, taken from the kitchen drawer where Duo had keep such odds and ends, and better gifts than that, things Six might never have been able to see again if Wufei hadn't bullied the local police into signing them out to him. A beloved stuffed dinosaur, Tori; pictures drawn in school from the first unsteady days of crayons to the more sophisticated portraits-- pictures of his father that would always survive. Reminders of Duo it had caused Wufei more than a simple twinge to give up, though there was no question, no doubt they were Six's, of course. A silver bracelet, inscription long worn away, the kind that soldiers wore to venerate fallen companions, that had been particularly hard to let slide into the box. Dozens of times when they'd laid in bed together, Duo's body stretched under his, Wufei's fingers had fallen to the warm metal, wondering what it was, though it had never seemed important enough then to ask--  
  
Six left trash in his wake, bags and cardboard scattered to the grass as he put the batteries into the console. He turned it on, sucking in a breath when it beeped obediently to life. Wufei set the second box to the ground and pulled his travel bag to the ground as well, opening his mouth to suggest they return to Trowa's trailer before Six loaded a game. But that wasn't what Six was doing at all. He was taking off his shoe-- from inside the foot he pried up the insole, and under it was a cartridge, just like the ones Wufei had found, slim plastic pieces. Six, solemn-faced, pale as a marble statue, held out console and gamepiece.  
  
'What's this?' Wufei said slowly. He turned the cartridges over to read the label. It wasn't a game, after all. It was one of those recordable discs.  
  
Recordable discs. He knew even before Six said it.  
  
Six was saying it, his light small voice falling gravely. 'I was playing with it, when my dad got nervous, about the people in the street. You know, how it records like a camera? For a school project for Miss Zabrinski. And-- later-- I got to thinking about it, so when I was going I got the cartridge and put it in my pocket.'  
  
It took two tries to speak. 'This could be very important evidence, Six,' he whispered. 'That was good thinking.' If it was playable. If it had captured anything. Six couldn't even know if it had, if he'd only taken the cartridge and not the console--  
  
'I don't know if there's anything on it. But maybe you could do cop things to it and find out. It was nice of you to buy me a new console, though.'  
  
He was puzzled, first. Then scared. 'This isn't your machine?'  
  
'I dropped the other one, back on L2. At the shuttle port. It broke on the escalator.'  
  
He never had to call for Heero. Heero had heard, and dispensed with the pretence of privacy, striding right to the car. He took the console from Wufei's hands, prying open the casing with his fingernails. He didn't waste a curse for the bug they found, simple sound and location broadcast plant, and neither did Wufei. It was far too late for that.  
  
'Get back to the trailer,' Wufei said. 'Run, Six. Now.'  
  
  
**  
  
  
'I don't think he looked well,' Quatre said.  
  
'He looked fine,' Trowa repeated impatiently. 'Can we stop talking about how Wufei looked?'  
  
'I mean he looked like he was ill.'  
  
'He did seem tired,' Kathy offered. 'But-- well, isn't everyone, right now?'  
  
'It was more than that.'  
  
'Ohh, I get it,' Trowa interrupted. 'You know, I honestly thought it was Heero. But it's Wufei, isn't it?'  
  
Quatre flushed. 'Shut up. Now.'  
  
'What's this?'  
  
'Quatre's had a seven-year itch for Wufei,' Trowa told his sister.  
  
'I have not!'  
  
'What about the underwear model?'  
  
All their heads turned, then. 'Was that a shout?' Trowa said.  
  
'Yes, it was.' Quatre was the first out of the door, but only because he was closest. Kathy came out with the cleaver she'd been wielding on the rack of ribs in the kitchen, and Trowa came out with a gun he'd clearly been getting twitchy for the chance to use. He tossed another at Quatre, but Quatre had already loosed his from the holster under his jacket and he caught the airborne one only out of instinct. It didn't slow his sprint between the trailers.  
  
There were the missing three, Wufei and Six in the lead, Wufei carrying Six, Heero behind taking careful shots that cracked in the crisp L3 winterised air. And the gunfire was being noticed when the flight might not have been. A scream started from somewhere. Trowa took a shot-- Quatre devoutly hoped he'd been sure of the target-- and then Quatre saw it, too. A group of men, armed. Quatre stopped running just long enough to empty his gun at them.  
  
And then Kathy hit his shoulder, and Quatre just got his finger off the trigger in time not to hit any of the cowering bystanders. 'We need one who can talk!' Kathy snapped at him, and hurled the cleaver in a glorious silver whir. It hit a gunman at thigh-height, and he went down with a yell and scarlet spurt of blood.  
  
Wufei was in range. He set Six back to the ground, hand out. Quatre threw Trowa's spare gun to him, and Wufei caught it and aimed it in the same move. 'Prisoners!' Quatre shouted, and Wufei smoothly adjusted so that his shot took one of his attackers in the shoulder, not the head. Heero had heard, too, and was taking body shots now.  
  
'Six!' Kathy yelled. 'Come here, sweetie!'  
  
Too many men. More men than bullets. Eighteen, Quatre thought, but then it was twenty, and for every one that fell there was another coming. Big men, some of them, some with a Spacer's slim build. Twenty-two, and another coming in from behind--  
  
The impact to his chest sucked the breath from him. Then he was on his back, black clearing from his eyes slowly to show only the shimmer curve of the colony's solar panels. He was cold.  
  
'Quatre!' He felt the hands on him, because the hands were so hot and his body was so cold. 'Quatre. You'll be fine. Look at me.'  
  
'Where am I hit?' he asked, or tried to. It came out mostly in coughs.  
  
It was Heero. He could mostly see. Heero was pushing on him, which seemed rude until Quatre realised, dimly, that it was probably to put pressure on his wound.  
  
'Six?'  
  
Heero was a blank blur. Not saying anything.  
  
'Six?' Quatre demanded. 'Heero, where is he--'  
  
'They have him.' Heero pushed so hard on him that Quatre coughed again, and like that the hurt blossomed. He couldn't catch his breath, couldn't stop coughing, and there was something wet in his throat.  
  
'Quatre!'  
  
'Six,' he tried to say. 'Go after him. Don't--'  
  
He was shoved roughly onto his side, and all the liquid in his lungs had somewhere to go, then. He hacked it out into the grass, and it sprayed red from his mouth. But he could breathe again. He could breathe.  
  
'Quat.' It was Trowa, face wild and tear-streaked. 'Quat, they took him. Wufei's down, they got him in the knee-- Raoul tried to help, I think he's dead-- there's dozens of people injured, here, someone's bound to call-- call the cops-- they took Six, Quat. They took Six.'  
  
  
**  
  
  
Eighteen wounded. Two fatalies-- their people, anyway. The enemy dead had been dragged away by their living accomplices as they fled.  
  
They were fleeing, too, though. Wrong direction. Six was being taken in one direction, and Quatre was being taken in the other. They weren't going after Six. Not yet. Not with another one down. Heero had been torn, was physically torn as if his body were being ripped in half. Six or Quatre.  
  
Then the ambulance had come and Trowa had pulled Wufei out of it, pulled him out and climbed in instead, talking to Quatre in that intense way men talked to comrades who might not make it but had to, had to-- talking to Quatre as if talking would keep a heart beating, if you just did it long enough and loud enough.  
  
And then because Wufei was out of the ambulance but was still walking with blood spurting out the patella, Kathy had tried to run him over with the Jeep and was now trying to run over everyone between them and Saint Luke's Hospital. Heero thought that the forty minutes to the hospital was likely to be more deadly than the ten minutes it had taken for the ambush at the circus grounds. Kathy was more furious than anyone he had ever seen, including Duo, who might just have matched her, if he had been with them--  
  
And if he had been with them, they wouldn't have been here, and they might not be silently wondering if they would lose Quatre too, now.  
  
The radio was already buzzing with the story. They were interviewing the witnesses, or trying to. The circus folk were close-lipped even without an attack on their own. Heero was thinking and not-thinking, his eyes on his white clenched fists, and slowly registered-- Wufei was saying--  
  
'One of us should've gone looking.'  
  
'The grounds were swarming with cameramen and reporters,' Kathy retorted. 'They already picked up that it's Quatre Winner who was shot, and it wouldn't have been long before the rest of you were identified too, and then you wouldn't have been able to step foot in any direction, much less try to trace their trail.'  
  
'One of us should still--'  
  
Kathy said flatly, 'If you blame yourself in my hearing one more time I will kick you out of this vehicle, and I will not be slowing down first.'  
  
'Why shouldn't I? I should have checked his things. I should have known!'  
  
Kathy slammed the Jeep three lanes right to get at the highway exit. It rocked them in their seats, and Heero had to grip the door to keep his ass connected to the seat. 'I've been walking the compound since I arrived,' he interjected. Kathy's hot hazel eyes glared at him through the rearview. 'I was walking behind you and Six the entire time and I didn't see them coming. You're not the only one who missed the clues.'  
  
'It should have occurred to me that his things were bugged, damn it.' Wufei's exhale was shaky. 'You would have suspected it, wouldn't you?'  
  
Yes. He would have.  
  
Kathy tapped the brakes at a stop sign before barreling through the intersection. A horn trailed them, fading quickly. She said, 'You were trying to be a father, not a cop. So what you did was right, even if it turned out wrong.'  
  
'I'll find him.'  
  
'Yes, we'll find him. And try not to do what Duo did-- if you die before he's safe, I'm kicking you out of this god-damn Jeep, Chang Wufei.'  
  
Wufei shifted. Heero shifted, to keep Wufei's foot propped over his lap, to keep the bundled shirt they'd wrapped around Wufei's knee in place. 'I think you should act as though you believe her.'  
  
Wufei turned sharp, red eyes at Heero. 'I know she means it.'  
  
'I mean it, too.' He reached to Wufei's knee, his already stained fingers acquiring a new wet film as he pressed the cloth into the wound. Wufei's jaw tightened. 'She might not be able to kick hard enough to knock you out of the car, but I can.'  
  
Another silence, then. Wufei's hair had come lose from the tail and whipped in the wind of their frenetic drive. The daylight lit sweat-streaked tendons in Wufei's neck. Like Quatre's, when he'd been lying in the grass where Heero found him.  
  
Wufei spoke again, quietly now. 'Six said you'd all been fighting. Over him. It makes him uncomfortable.'  
  
'God damn it,' Kathy swore.  
  
'That was his assumption, anyway. I tried to convince him-- convince him otherwise.'  
  
'Do you really think this is the best time to keep arguing over him?'  
  
'We're not arguing,' Wufei said raggedly. 'We're having a conversation.'  
  
Kathy actually turned, then, her bare arm stretching over the empty seat beside her as she twisted to look at her backseat passengers. Her eyes were narrow, then wide. 'My God,' she said. 'You want to keep him.'  
  
'Yes.' Wufei sought Heero's gaze. His own was pleading, but his words were pugnacious. 'I have every right,' he said. 'He and Duo and I were a family.'  
  
Kathy faced forward again.  
  
'It's what he knew,' Wufei said.  
  
Heero tried to wet his lips with a dry tongue. He said, 'Once we find out about Quatre, one of us should start tracking these people. Did you get them to close the ports?'  
  
Wufei stared at him. 'I--' He wiped at the sweat on his brow. 'I made some calls, yes. I--'  
  
'We're almost there,' Kathy told them.  
  
'There's going to be news coverage,' Wufei burst out.  
  
Twenty people shot, including Quatre Winner. Of course there would be.  
  
'With the right spin,' Wufei said. He shifted again, urgent shift, urgently trying to convince them. 'It can work in our favour. I gave them the right spin.'  
  
Heero had to press on Wufei's knee again. 'What are you talking about?'  
  
'There's going to be news coverage.' Wufei spoke so quickly that his words tumbled over each other. 'I called one of Preventers' contacts in the local press. Amber alert-- boy of Six's description, Six, not Rupert Maxwell-- and there's a picture-- I gave her a picture from my wallet. I told them to say it's a custody kidnapping. Media blitz. Television, internet press--' His own panting breaths cut him off. He wiped his forehead again, and left a streak of red behind.  
  
In the front seat, Kathy let out an explosive sigh. 'Thank God you've got your head on your shoulders,' she said, warm suddenly. 'That's brilliant, Wufei.'  
  
Heero did not agree. 'You've just alerted their entire organisation that they have to go underground.'  
  
'No-one but his family knows that nickname,' Wufei argued. 'And even if they did... they have to be expecting us to do something public. It would be insanity to cover it up. Just like it was insanity to cover up Duo's murder.'  
  
Kathy ended it by swerving suddenly to take an open spot, cramming the Jeep between two larger vehicles. There wasn't enough room to open the door on her side, so she merely went over the top, slithering down the rigging to the asphalt. 'Get out,' she told them. 'You can keep arguing inside.'  
  
It wasn't quite as easy to get Wufei out of the Jeep, but once they had him on the street, Kathy abandoned them for the walk and sprinted for the ER doors, making considerable time even in her high heeled sandals. By the time Wufei and Heero made it inside, she was at the desk speaking to a nurse. Kathy pointed imperiously at them as they entered, Wufei limping heavily and refusing more than Heero's arm around his shoulders for balance. Kathy said, 'Someone shove this man into a wheelchair and prep him.'  
  
Heero stood close enough to hear Wufei grind his teeth, but whether it was Kathy's declaration or his own pain it was impossible to know. 'That's not necessary,' Wufei grated. 'Please.'  
  
'Argue with me, Wufei. Please.'  
  
The desk nurse looked back and forth between them uncomfortably. Heero interrupted the byplay by catching his eyes. He said, 'Quatre Winner.'  
  
'He's still in Emergency, sir. No visitors yet.'  
  
'Are there any papers to sign?' Kathy asked.  
  
Heero didn't wait on the answer. All the cream-coloured walls looked alike, so he focussed on the stream of people walking through the halls. People wearing scrubs kept moving toward a pair of closed doors; Heero followed them through it, ignoring the one who tried to warn him back out again. There were rows of operating rooms stretching to either side, and he stood in a waiting room now, panelled all in glass so the waiters could try vainly to see what happened in the ORs. And there was Trowa, standing pressed to the glass several yards ahead. Heero crossed the distance with each footfall heavier than the last. He had to will himself to take the last, the one that brought him even with Trowa, to look through that big window. He made his eyes level, made himself take in the sight inside.  
  
They were operating on a man. Several people in gowns and masks, only two holding real surgical implements, their hands moving over and in the body on the table. The body wore a cotton cap over his hair and a large oxygen mask with snaking plastic tubes obscured much of his face, but Heero knew it was Quatre. His own body knew, his chest so tight he couldn't breathe until he opened his mouth to draw in the air, as if his lungs were full of water. And there on the other side of the glass they put a tube in of Quatre's chest, and scarlet red flowed out from Quatre into the tube.  
  
'He coded in the ambulance,' Trowa said. His lips were bitten and he was pale. Heero wondered, vaguely, if he looked like that too. Maybe he didn't. He didn't feel like that, except for the heaviness in him. Drowning him. 'They brought him back. They're acting like he'll make it. One of them said something about transferring him Earth-side. Hospitals here are-- are shit, you know.'  
  
The smaller of the surgeons, the woman bent over Quatre's torso, lifted a pair of forceps up into the light. She had the bullet that had done this to Quatre. She set it carefully in a bowl one of the other gowned doctors held, and took back a needle instead.  
  
'Maybe—' Trowa said. 'If someone had got Duo to a hospital, he...'  
  
'Look,' someone behind them spoke, and then there was different noise, television noise. The volume rising rapidly, to be just a little too loud. 'We're here on the site of what is becoming one of the bloodiest attacks on L3 since the war, where the tranquility of Wertzimmer Circus was viciously disrupted by the appearance of several gunmen just two hours ago. Police Chief Patil is about to address the gathered press and witnesses, still so shattered over the loss of two-- excuse me, I've just been told the death toll here has been officially brought up to four-- here's Chief Patil, asking for our attention--'  
  
'Tell them to turn that off,' Trowa mumbled.  
  
'Thank you all for waiting. We need you all to run this photograph, it's been linked to your networks as we speak. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the picture you're seeing on your screens now is a boy named Six who was kidnapped during the commotion here. We are issuing an amber alert for this boy, who is approximately four feet and two inches--'  
  
'What did you do.' Trowa turned. Wufei was there now, standing disheveled and with the shirt at his knee now sluggishly falling off, its knots too loose and soaked to hold. 'You did this?'  
  
Wufei nodded jerkily. 'I thought it was best, yes.'  
  
Heero could see every thought on Trowa's face. Of two minds about it. Seeing the reasoning in exposing the kidnapping to the public. Knowing there were ways to manipulate the media to get what they wanted, needed-- but still hating it. Distasteful. Exploitative. Dangerous. And Six would be the one to suffer for it.  
  
Wufei drew in a sharp breath. 'No--'  
  
Kathy interrupted unwittingly, approaching behind Wufei carrying an armful of clipboards and paperwork. She wasn't even looking up as she walked, and didn't seem to realise how potentially explosive the situation was. 'Who knows Quatre's middle name?' she asked them all. 'And is the underwear model his emergency contact?'  
  
Wufei passed his hand over his face. 'I'll be his contact. I don't know I have a number for Takeo.'  
  
'Middle name? And does anyone know anything about his medical history? I'm really not the right person to be--'  
  
'I'll help you,' Wufei said wearily, and sat where she pointed him. It was only then Heero realised Kathy had meant to achieve that all along; she was a shade too smug when Wufei propped his leg up again. Heero left them to it, turning to face Quatre's operation again. Trowa turned with him, hands falling to the wooden railing, gripping hard.  
  
Then Trowa said, pitched only to him and not to the pair at the chairs behind them, 'We need to discuss where we go from here.'  
  
Heero nodded his consent. 'If his surgeons think he's safe to make re-entry.'  
  
'No. As soon as he's stable enough, we need to move him. He's at risk here. Vulnerable. We need to move him--'  
  
'To where? He'll need hospital recovery.'  
  
'His place on Earth. With his money, he could probably get better care at home than in any hospital. One of us can go with him.' Trowa's head slanted, his eyes settling angled behind them. Then, even quieter, Trowa said, 'You and I are going to find Six.'  
  
Heero didn't blink at that notion, but something else in that struck him. He said slowly, 'You are deliberately separating Wufei from us.'  
  
'That's right.'  
  
'Why? His status as a Preventer agent is useful, in addition to his abilities.'  
  
'Then he can be useful on Earth, where I don't have to deal with him.'  
  
'This is personal.'  
  
'Hell, yes, it's personal. He fucked up.'  
  
Trowa was too controlled to let his voice raise unwonted. It was iron hard and it stayed just above a whisper that wouldn't carry. Heero was no less so. 'It was a mistake,' he agreed. 'But it brought Duo's killers into the open. We've seen them now. We can hunt them down and destroy them.'  
  
'And we'll do that. But we don't need to do it in each others' pockets.'  
  
'Past experience would indicate that you are incorrect. And present experience demonstrates that you're a prick. He didn't lose Six. It took all of us to lose Six.'  
  
'He brought them here,' Trowa hissed at him. 'Didn't he? Hell, maybe he did it on purpose. Using Six as bait.'  
  
Heero had very rarely felt the grim dark feeling that come over him then. Trowa's face seemed very ugly to him, and Trowa's voice too, and even Trowa's justified anger seemed very ugly because this reaction wasn't justified. He didn't want to look at Trowa looking like that. So he didn't. He turned his face forward again, to Quatre inside that operating room. And he took a large step away from Trowa, so that he wouldn't have to stand near Trowa like that, saying such things.  
  
Not far enough away not to feel Trowa stiffen. 'Heero. Don't turn your back on me.'  
  
Heero would not look at him. The doctors were doing something new inside, the two surgeons stepping away with bloody gloves held at chest height, while the other ones in their clean gowns began disconnecting all the tubes and IV lines, packing them about Quatre's body. They pushed the big rolling bed away from the centre spot it occupied, to the wall, where large computers stood. Heartbeat. Blood pressure. Lung function.  
  
'Heero. I need you.'  
  
Kathy, again. 'Does anyone know Quatre's security number? Neither of us do.'  
  
'05-3928-3489dwt,' Trowa said. He closed the gap between he and Heero. 'I don't want to fight with you.'  
  
'We're not fighting. We're not speaking.'  
  
'You know...' Trowa's chest heaved in and out, audible breaths. 'Fuck you.' His boots clunked hard on the tile floor as he went away, and then a door slammed. He'd got to the smoker's vestibule at the far end of the hall. Heero could see him through the little window, gripping fists in his own hair, before his head disappeared from the square and all it showed was grey again.  
  
Heero inhaled deeply through his nose, letting the air dribble slowly from between his lips. It cleared his chest, but not his head. Duo would have handled that better than he had. Duo had always known how to handle people. Even Trowa. But even with Trowa, even after they'd broken off their romance or affair or whatever it had been, Duo had known not to go after him again, because Trowa wasn't the kind of person who really knew how to forgive. Duo had known that.  
  
It occurred to Heero, then, that he had finally accepted it. Even in his thoughts, there was no hesitation now in thinking about Duo as-- gone.  
  
His eyes stung. He blinked until they didn't, and made himself watch as the surgeons inside finished their tests on Quatre. They were prepping him, it seemed, to be taken maybe to an ICU. He could see an angle of Quatre's face now, his eyes closed.  
  
He was so absorbed he didn't hear Kathy approaching, and her hand on the middle of his back made him jump like a child. His heart lurched in a single palpitation before he recovered himself. He looked behind him, but Wufei no longer sat there. The clipboards were gone, as well.  
  
'I'm sorry,' Heero said to her. 'About your people at the circus.'  
  
Watching it from the outside, Heero wondered again if he looked like that. Kathy's eyes took on a watery sheen and went red at the rim of the lids, but her expression was set and she didn't cry. 'Thank you,' she replied evenly. 'I'm sorry too. I knew all of them well.'  
  
Her hand on his back pressed warmly. 'Does your intuition say-- if Quatre will be all right?'  
  
'We can't afford to lose another member of the family. So let's go with yes.'  
  
He turned toward her. She was shorter than him, only barely, though her red curls piled into a chaotic ponytail made up the difference. She was both harder and smaller than other women he had known, those other women who had been warriors and queens and whose toughness had come from rigid regimens like Heero's, of making decisions that destroyed as many lives as they saved. Kathy had never had to end a life. But she had saved some; she had helped in saving Heero's, by hiding him during his long recovery from the destruction of his Gundam. She had saved Trowa's, physically preventing his death and by bringing him out of a half-life by making him her brother in everything but blood. And she was doing the same now for another life, for a boy who had lost one family and needed another to heal the hurt. These were new thoughts to Heero, a shift in a long-set perspective. The same perspective in which Duo had been alive somewhere, one of Heero's few and precious links to a humanity he'd tried to escape by heading into Deep Space. The world was different now. Not changing, not moving on, just-- different than what it had been, unalterably. Heero couldn't change it back.  
  
'Who can?' she said, and he felt a flush on his face when he realised he had said that aloud. 'Oh, don't blush at me. I'm not asking for the impossible. I never saw the point in that, but maybe I just saw you differently because I knew all you boys when you were still children in your killing machines. I lived in that world a lot longer than any of you, you know, the world before the war. I remember very clearly what it was like. Everything had been bad for so long, everyone had been frightened and cornered and beaten down for so long, no-one believed anymore that we could change anything, that we just had to accept the universe the way it was. Everywhere we went it was the same. Until you boys. You gave people hope. And all hope is is the belief that things can change for the better.'  
  
'Katherine.'  
  
'I'm not done, dear.' She faced him, her hands going to the collar of his shirt to flatten it as if she couldn't stop herself from doing it, but face-on he could see new lines by her eyes and mouth, how drawn she looked. 'I remember how little all of you were. Your big raw bones in those little boy bodies, and all of you willing, if not eager, to throw your lives away for the cause. And don't fool yourself that's not part of what inspired people. People can bear all kinds of injustice, you know, but it tears something in the soul to see children fighting your wars for you, because we're too afraid to step up. But look what kind of men you grew into. Quatre in there, do you even remember how he looked then? In his school uniform still, like he just ran away from home and never made it back again. And Trowa, skinny as a twig you'd snap if you even shook it wrong. I used to think Wufei would sooner tear himself apart than look anyone in the eye. Duo-- Duo was all energy, you remember that? He could fill a room just by showing up, but you couldn't keep one thought in his head for longer than two seconds. And you. You were this ferocious, bleak, angry child soldier. You never would have let me this close to you then. But all of you grew up into such wonderful men, men with good hearts and love for each other and-- and all this determination to put it all behind you. Well, for better or worse, maybe things never changed that much, or maybe they've just changed back to what it was before, but you've got the bug. We all started to just accept things again. Probably it's part of growing older. But now Duo's little boy needs you to stop being scared of taking that step up.'  
  
'Trowa says that Duo was the only one who...' Her hand on his chest seemed to be pressing down on him, but it anchored him, too. 'The only one who never thought the war was over. He tried to tell me, once. The last time I saw him. He said-- Heero, if you only knew what's out there still. I told him I thought he was paranoid to imagine it was there in his backyard. And that's where he died, right on his own street.'  
  
'We can't change what's done. All we can do is hope the change we make now will be better.'  
  
'We'll get Six back.'  
  
'I know you will. I have faith in all of you.'  
  
One of the doctors was making notes on a chart attached to Quatre's bed. They lifted his hand to adjust the pulse indicator on his finger, and his hand was limp. Heero said, 'I've always wondered why all the women I know say things like that.'  
  
'Because we're smart. And we know what you're capable of accomplishing.'  
  
Quietly, he answered, 'I hope I'm worthy of it.' He bent his neck, to brush her cheek with his mouth, not even cringing at the contact. She held very still for it, helpfully, and smiled at him when he straightened. He said then, 'Trowa's very upset with Wufei.'  
  
'I know.' She wrapped her hands about his biceps and leant against him, watching with him as they began to push Quatre's bed toward swinging doors inside. 'They're both very stubborn.'  
  
'I think this may go beyond stubborn. He wants to send Quatre back to Earth, and I think it's at least partly an excuse to send Wufei with him.'  
  
'Maybe he's not wrong to, Heero. If they can't be in the same room together, how are they going to work together?'  
  
'You agree with Trowa then?'  
  
'No, I really don't. But I know how he thinks. And I know he's going to box himself in if something doesn't break. Quatre will need help. Maybe we should encourage Wufei to give it to him and work from there.' They moved Quatre through the doors, and then he was gone from their view. She sighed. 'Try not to be so hard on him, please. This has been tough on him and having Six with us has been the first true happiness I've observed in Trowa since-- well, for a long time.'  
  
'Then I will suggest to Wufei that he should go back to Earth with Quatre. Not Trowa. It will be better coming from me.'  
  
'It might be best,' she agreed sadly. 'Or I can talk to him.'  
  
'I would like it if you would, because sometimes you explain things better, but the words should come from me first.' He separated gingerly from her hold. 'I'll go speak to him. Please... will you find out where they're taking Quatre for me?'  
  
'I will, Heero. Go on.'


End file.
